Irish SOPA, ACTA and Internet rights

KyussBishop

I very closely follow the topic of anti-piracy laws, overbearing copyright laws, and basically anything which threatens censorship or breach of privacy on the internet;
there has been an enormous upsurge in attempts made to force in these laws lately, and it seems new laws like them keep on coming, and people have to push back against them repeatedly, always on the defensive.

A good argument I read recently, is that if people are always on the defensive, they will always be on the losing side, having to fight off new laws repeatedly.
So, I want to start a discussion about proposing our own (reasonable!) laws, and lobbying to have them implemented; we badly need to bring laws that protect rights up to date, with the popularization of the Internet.


I posted these in another thread, and I think they are quite reasonable: (these must be explicitly put into law, we can't assume they extend from other rights; attacks from copyright laws show that doesn't work)

• All people should have an unrestricted right to access the Internet (it is just about essential for modern life, and not having access to it puts people at severe disadvantage in many ways)
  
• No content on the internet must be filtered or blocked, the principles of net neutrality (i.e. treating all internet content equally) must be put into law and enforced upon ISPs
  
• The 'mere conduit' principles for ISPs must be reinforced, so ISPs are neutral and not liable to the Internet traffic they process
  
• Consumer rights must be reinforced and brought up to date with the Internet, fine companies for EULA's in breach of Irish law, people must have 100% complete control and ownership over hardware they buy, outlaw Digital Rights Management where it infringes on that control
  
• As an extension of the above point, peoples privacy rights must be bolstered, and it must be illegal for internet services to share peoples private information without an explicit opt-in (which is not part of a EULA), and access to the services must be provided when the user refuses the opt-in
  
• Users must have 100% complete control over their private information online, and must explicitly be able to demand its complete deletion, including from any website backups
  
• Data retention (storing of users internet activity) must be made illegal, to protect ISP customers privacy, and monitoring of users internet traffic must require a warrant (if it does not already specifically do this)
  
• Extending from the above, it must explicitly be put into law that online services are allowed to offer complete 100% anonymity for users, and no law should be put in place requiring storing of identifying information for users (a massive issue for whistleblower websites in particular, e.g. www.whistleblowerconfidential.ie, where people may end up in jail if the website is obliged to store user info, and is subpoenaed)
  
• Where services storing private user information, are subpoenaed for private information on a user, they must explicitly notify the user of the subpoena and the user must have opportunity to contest this in court

Plus rather a lot more I can't think of offhand; these mainly just cover the Internet, not issues with copyrights themselves (and I think it should be kept simple and concise like this).


It's a common reaction I hear from some who say "it's pointless, will never happen" etc., but I think that is kind of defeatist, and if a big enough effort was made (with enough influential people contributing), there is a serious chance something like this could make a big difference.
We will just be waiting for the next overbearing copyright law otherwise, and more importantly politicians will only hear one side of the argument, from the content industries; an enormous sum of money is spent by them, lobbying politicians.

I recognize the need for copyright laws themselves, and the issue of online piracy; these are issues that need to be addressed, but not when the cost is peoples expression/consumer/privacy rights, or the threat of expanding Internet censorship; hence the need to reassert the above basic principles in law.

Citizen_Kane

100% spot on.

Our jellyfish elected officials however are not going to come to this conclusion independently, only the public can make them do it.

The general public has the attention span of the latest edition of the 'Mirror' and who can blame them? We are in 'Future Shock'.

I think the best thing to be done is pick the argument for today's issue (Irish SI No. something or other, AKA 'Irish SOPA') very carefully. It needs to support the very good proposals you have put forward above.

This argument IMO needs to revolve around the redundancy of present copyright laws in light of new technology and the need for new (maybe copyleft?) laws as the official mechanism for protecting the rights of content creators. This argument essentially tells the 'big content corporations' that their rights and claims are no longer respected, but the rights of the individuals they claim to represent are. This is an argument we are likely to lose on the day, but it will lay valuable groundwork and educate many people.

The more likely tact that will be taken is to argue that this law will damage new industry, such as Facebook and Google, in favour of old industry, such as EMI and that a middle ground must be found. A much easier battle to win on the day, but also shoots us in the foot when it comes to winning the war.

kris71

I tried to educate people over the weekend in Galway I made most of em to put a reminder in their phone for tmr afternoon to google up ACTA problem was in my hostel the only sober person was the lad who was running reception but the education process went generally ok, it would be much better if at least I would be sober but hey its Galway . What we need is a bit of courage and just explain everyone you know what this **** is all about. out of maybe 30 people I was talking to over the weekend only 2 knew anything about it. This is scary **** but we can won this by educating others (I know those videos have been posted before in different topics but they will do much better here at first page)
So here we go:

What is ACTA:

Educate others. People are not stupid but they are easy to manipulate. Here is how it looks when public finds out about ACTA

european parliament official charge acta quits denounces masquerade behind acta:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120126/11014317553/european-parliament-official-charge-acta-quits-denounces-masquerade-behind-acta.shtml?fb_ref=article&fb_source=home_oneline

WATCH READ SHARE make sure everyone knows what those ignorants are signing in our names

blubloblu

KyussBishop wrote: »

• No content on the internet must be filtered or blocked, the principles of net neutrality (i.e. treating all internet content equally) must be put into law and enforced upon ISPs

To play Devil's advocate, what about illegal content such as child pornography or defamatory material?

thebman

blubloblu wrote: »

To play Devil's advocate, what about illegal content such as child pornography or defamatory material?

Why block it, just find the people accessing it and jail them for getting it and report the scum hosting it and track down the people making it. Downloading it is a criminal offense is it not?

If you just block the website, your just closing your eyes to something that is going on in the world. It still goes on, just because you block it, you just make them revert to posting it to each other which will probably make it harder to find them.

KyussBishop

blubloblu wrote: »

To play Devil's advocate, what about illegal content such as child pornography or defamatory material?

In the case of child porn, go after the people hosting such content, and get it at the source.
You can try to block access to child porn, but there is no method of doing this that cannot be bypassed easily.

You can make it harder to access though, so here are a couple of methods of doing that:
1: Block websites hosting child porn
2: Filter packets looking for known child porn files

Problems with option 1:
- You can get by website blocking with proxies
- You need a website blacklist, but if the blacklist is public knowledge, people can use it to find child porn (leads them right to it in fact, worse than no blocking)
- If you have a secret blacklist, anything can be censored without accountability

Problems with option 2:
- This is known as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), and is pretty controversial in itself
- Where website blocking has potential issues about accountability, e.g. if blacklists are secret, DPI is worse; it is not a simple list, it actually filters all the content in real time
- DPI is inherently less transparent than a simple website blacklist, because of how much more complicated it is (opening up and reading every packet); exactly how it is implemented, is unlikely to be published, creating the same issues as a secret blacklist
- DPI does not just potentially threaten censorship, it threatens privacy as well, because it can be used analyze all of your internet traffic in realtime
- There's more that's bad about DPI, but this is what comes to mind offhand

A bigger picture issue with child porn and blocking of content in general, is that once you block one thing, it is significantly easier for politicians to successfully argue for blocking more things.
Once you pass that first step, it is quite a slippery slope.


Offhand, I can think of these ways of tackling defamation:
1: Take legal action against the website hosting the offending comments (e.g. against boards.ie, for a comment here), and have them remove the comment
2: As above, but if the website refuses to remove the comment, have the website blocked
3: Take action against the site hosting the comment, and demand to know the IP of the person who made it

Problems with 1:
- The main problem with this is where responsibility for defamation rests (addressed more in 2 below); however, what usually happens, is the website removes the comment and everyone's happy; overall, this is an acceptable solution to defamation online imo

Problems with 2:
- This puts the responsibility for offending comments on the person hosting the website, not upon the poster; this can create a heavy burden for some websites (particularly ones with rather a lot of user comments e.g. Reddit/4chan)
- In addition to the above being a burden, the threat of lawsuits against a website can also lead to chilling effects, where some legitimate topics cannot be discussed, because the website owner cannot afford to defend themselves against the lawsuit
- If the website hosts cannot be brought to court (e.g. different country), and blocking is the alternative, this can be used to censor websites without the hosts being able to defend themselves in court
- In addition to above with blocking, I imagine it being a trivial means to censor more propagandistic news websites, with legitimately defaming content (e.g. lets say PressTV in Iran published something defamatory, the defamed person got the whole website blocked here in Ireland); that's a pretty big threat to free speech, even if it was legitimate defamation
- There's probably more on this that I'm missing; I haven't considered defamation in detail before

Problems with point 3:
- This is an inherent threat to free speech due to its chilling effects, and to privacy, because the website host may have no interest in defending the case in court and can just hand your IP over (posters knowing this, will censor themselves, hence the chilling effect)

Spacedog

blubloblu wrote: »

To play Devil's advocate, what about illegal content such as child pornography or defamatory material?

To clarify 'net neutrality' is more about the type of internet traffic as opposed to the content. like when mobile data companies block VOIP and skype, so that they can keep charging for expensive voice services. or when ISPs throttle bit-torrent, regardless of content. bit torrent is used for many legit content, World of Warcraft updates, revision3 TV and open source software distribution are all crippled by ISPs that slow bit torrent traffic.

regarding child pornographers and terrorists. it could be said that they would harder to find if pirates were forced to encrypt their transfers.

Here's some anti-piracy, pro-domestic-surveillance propaganda from the BBC that illustrates the point...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq2PK2W-vVI

Einhard

Thanks for posting this KyussBishop. I've been wondering about these new legislative attempts to deal with copyright issues, and it's good to see such a detailed post on the matter. I have a few questions though, and some points to make regarding your own. I'm relatively ignorant on this matter so I don't really have a position on this, although I do think there is a tendency on the part of some in anti-Sopa/Acta/etc community who speak only of their rights and never their responsibilities.

KyussBishop wrote: »

So, I want to start a discussion about proposing our own (reasonable!) laws, and lobbying to have them implemented; we badly need to bring laws that protect rights up to date, with the popularization of the Internet.

You speak about rights here. What about the rights of content creators, be they multinational conglomerates, local bands, or individuals working away on their own? Today's Times mentioned that Aslan's last album was downloaded 22000 times. That's a major issue. It's robbery. It's not just illegal but, IMO, immoral too. Yet when I've raised these issues with friends or in other fora, the response is to blame the music industry for the illegal actions of the downloaders. While the industries involved have to share some responsibility for the situation, the idea that the downloaders themselves have some share of it seems anathema to many. Again, it's all about rights, and precious little about responsibility.

I wonder what your attitude to this is, and how you'd prevent Aslan being exploited in such a manner?

[*]No content on the internet must be filtered or blocked, the principles of net neutrality (i.e. treating all internet content equally) must be put into law and enforced upon ISPs

This sets alarm bells off in my mind. What happens if an online journal publishes terrible libels and slanders against an individual. That individual goes to court to vindicate his good name. Under your system, the person who published the material might be punished, but the material itself would stay online. How is that equitable?

There's also the case of child pornography. I know you've stated that the posters of this and the downloaders should be prosecuted. But do you not think it slightly absurd that, on cracking a child porn ring, uncovering a website, and imprisoning the owners and distributors, that the site would then be left online? That seems to tbe the kind of think you're advocating. That once something goes on the web, then it should stay on the web and never, ever be removed by authorities.

[*]Consumer rights must be reinforced and brought up to date with the Internet, fine companies for EULA's in breach of Irish law, people must have 100% complete control and ownership over hardware they buy, outlaw Digital Rights Management where it infringes on that control

Again, more talk of rights, but none of responsibilities. You seem to be all for protecting consumer rights, yet say nothing about the rights of content creators. Surely they have rights too? Afterall, consumers do not (and should not) have the right to steal and rob, downloading whatever they feel like without consequences. But that's the message that seems to be coming from some people on your side of the argument.

[*]As an extension of the above point, peoples privacy rights must be bolstered, and it must be illegal for internet services to share peoples private information without an explicit opt-in (which is not part of a EULA), and access to the services must be provided when the user refuses the opt-in

Privacy rights have never been absolutely sacrosanct. If they have grounds, the police can intercept post and phone calls. Most people, i think, would see this as reasonable. If they have similar grounds, why shouldn't the police have similar access to online traffic and use?

Incidentally, wouldn't your demand hamper child porn investigations? If a provider is in possession of material that identifies child pornographers or downloaders of their material, should they not have an obligation to share that info? They have material that is pertinent to the investigation of horrific crimes, and yet you seem to believe that the perpetrators of such crimes should be the ones who decide whether the material is shared. If I'm understanding you correctly, that's a slightly disturbing position to be honest.

[*]Users must have 100% complete control over their private information online, and must explicitly be able to demand its complete deletion, including from any website backups

See above.

[*]Extending from the above, it must explicitly be put into law that online services are allowed to offer complete 100% anonymity for users, and no law should be put in place requiring storing of identifying information for users (a massive issue for whistleblower websites in particular, e.g. www.whistleblowerconfidential.ie, where people may end up in jail if the website is obliged to store user info, and is subpoenaed)

Again, would this note aid criminal operations. If, for example, a terrorist event was being planned in a chatroom, and the ISP had information on those using that room for that purpose, would it not be a good idea for them to share such info with the police? Alternatively, if someone shares child porn on a chatsite, shouldn't their info not only be held by the ISP but shared witht he police?

[*]Where services storing private user information, are subpoenaed for private information on a user, they must explicitly notify the user of the subpoena and the user must have opportunity to contest this in court
[/LIST]

Doesn't this contradict the above?

We will just be waiting for the next overbearing copyright law otherwise, and more importantly politicians will only hear one side of the argument, from the content industries; an enormous sum of money is spent by them, lobbying politicians.

And Google, Facebook etc don't spend similar amounts of money on their own lobbying?

I recognize the need for copyright laws themselves, and the issue of online piracy; these are issues that need to be addressed, but not when the cost is peoples expression/consumer/privacy rights, or the threat of expanding Internet censorship; hence the need to reassert the above basic principles in law.

How would you go about protecting copyright, and allowing the likes of Aslan to profit from their hard work and industry?

thebman wrote: »

Why block it, just find the people accessing it and jail them for getting it and report the scum hosting it and track down the people making it. Downloading it is a criminal offense is it not?

If you just block the website, your just closing your eyes to something that is going on in the world. It still goes on, just because you block it, you just make them revert to posting it to each other which will probably make it harder to find them.

So child porn should never, ever be blocked online? Even if the criminals behind a site are arrested and jailed, and the authorities know of the site and have the means to close it, they should just leave it alone?

One of the additional traumas that child abuse survivors have to bear is the knowledge that their images are available across the web. Your approach would basically mean that they never have any hope that the proliferation of their images would ever be arrested or stopped. Could you imagine telling someone that you have the power to take down a site containing images of their horrific abuse, but that you won't because the web shouldn't be censored? I couldn't. I couldn't imagine anyone telling someone that some nebulous concept of 100% freedom of the web matters more than their suffering and continued humiliation. I'm not sure that you're making such an argument, but if you are I find it somewhat callous.



As I mentioned above, I don't want to get into a big fight. I'm not pushing any position here, except the idea that equity and fairness should apply to both sides, and that's a concept which I don't think those "anti-censorship" campaigners have fully grasped. Their only concern is 100% freedom of expression, and if that hurts innocent people, then so be it. Seems somewhat selfish to me.

Although, as I said, I'm here to learn. So I'm open to have my mind changed!

thebman

Einhard wrote: »

So child porn should never, ever be blocked online? Even if the criminals behind a site are arrested and jailed, and the authorities know of the site and have the means to close it, they should just leave it alone?

One of the additional traumas that child abuse survivors have to bear is the knowledge that their images are available across the web. Your approach would basically mean that they never have any hope that the proliferation of their images would ever be arrested or stopped. Could you imagine telling someone that you have the power to take down a site containing images of their horrific abuse, but that you won't because the web shouldn't be censored? I couldn't. I couldn't imagine anyone telling someone that some nebulous concept of 100% freedom of the web matters more than their suffering and continued humiliation. I'm not sure that you're making such an argument, but if you are I find it somewhat callous.

That isn't what I said, if you arrest the hosts then there is no website. The servers would be seized as evidence.

In any case if Ireland blocked the site, the site would not be down, it would be available through back doors and from other countries. The only safe way is not blocking, the only way to stop it to arrest those in charge of the site and shut it down. You don't need laws that extend to downloading pop music to do that however. We have strict enough laws against child porn.

If the site isn't in Ireland, it is up to the country that it is in to shut it down. If they fail to police their countries then political pressures need to be applied to get them to take child porn seriously.

Citizen_Kane

Just to pick up on one point that Einhard raised in his/her post (maybe more later, but it is late in the eve!)

I would like to reverse engineer your (courtesy of EMI vs UPC) Aslan point by starting with two examples:

1. Radiohead released their 'In Rainbows' album as MP3 and high quality WAV files available for download off their website for any price you want to pay. About 1/3 of people downloaded for free, but the band still made more money than their previous release because they were no longer signed with EMI.
2. Nine Inch Nails publishes much of their music under Creative Commons licensing. They are not begging in the street.

I would speculate that this is because they are bands of great artistic merit creating innovative content which music loving fans appreciate.

Not being familiar with the music of Aslan, I would like to pose two hypothetical scenarios.

1. They could be a band who rehashes tunes and styles of a bygone decade and EMI hopes to top up the coffers by releasing a marketing campaign driven 'Best Hits' or similar drivel. In this scenario nostalgic light music listeners would gleefully download the 'blast from the past' nostalgia - but would not be inclined to buy an album if this was the only option.
2. They could be a fantastic band with a dedicated fan base who would love to contribute to the upkeep and making of the next innovative, exciting album - but the 'PLEASE DONATE' option is not available on their website.

Other gems from 'EMI vs UPC' is the €10 million marketing EMI spent on Coldplay's Viva la something or other. If it costs that much just to market music, how are the wealth of local talented musicians supposed to get a break - let alone make a living. There are plenty of greater talents than Coldplay roaming around our streets.


The problem with believing the very sane sounding arguments of very powerful lobby groups is that they kindof slip into every day logic. Be mindful.

KyussBishop

Einhard wrote: »

Incidentally, wouldn't your demand hamper child porn investigations? If a provider is in possession of material that identifies child pornographers or downloaders of their material, should they not have an obligation to share that info? They have material that is pertinent to the investigation of horrific crimes, and yet you seem to believe that the perpetrators of such crimes should be the ones who decide whether the material is shared. If I'm understanding you correctly, that's a slightly disturbing position to be honest.

Eh, hold on a second here, your barely subtle wording here is trying to attribute defense of child porn onto me; reported.

Am well used to dishonest implications/attributions like that from other topics here, and pay little attention to them, but that is on another level.

Was half way through writing up a long reply to your post, but not going to bother with the rest of it now.

kris71

Funny thing that no one ever asks artists whats their opinion on this matter.

Internet is a completely different place than radio/tv. Main difference is the cost of getting your msg through to people. Simply speaking 1 man can open up an on line 'tv station'. No need for 10 million euro spend on advertising, if its good it will find its audience. There is no 'nah this wont sell' in the internet. Thats the main reason why I don't watch tv, I don't want to watch content that was picked up for me (and millions of others) by some greedy producers. I like to choose music do i listen to and what movie I'd like to watch. How many times did you go through all 500 channels of your tv and couldn't find anything you'd like? Never happens in the internet.

Artists don't need producers anymore, they finally start to realize that and thats why they are screaming and kicking around to keep their golden eggs for themselves.

All the artists need now days is a web-designer who will charge them once for building a website for them and then possibly charge them as well for maintenance. Or you can get one of your fans to do it for free... This cost is nothing compared to someone taking 80% of your earnings for the rest of your life.

A few days ago a local band put an announcement on this board that they are looking for help with their video clip, their budget was something around 350e, and I'm sure it was mainly for drinks and accommodation and they managed

So if I'm being an artists and I can record my own music for free then upload it on youtube for free, make some money with an ad-sense programme. If my content will generate a lot of views I will make money on it, start a website ask people to donate or just put a price on it whichever way suits ME.
Why would I let someone else to own the rights to my music?

this fella below is a great example all he does is dancing to the music that would be hard to find on tv and he is pretty awesome at this... 30 million views... good luck explaining it to producers that people might want to see something like that. 30 millions views with not a penny spend on advertising or production
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXO-jKksQkM&feature=related

---

Police already has laws that are giving them rights to monitor internet pedophiles, and as far as I know child pornography is not a copyright protected content, so i don't understand why is it relevant to ACTA?

Citizen_Kane

An opportunity to put forward your proposals in person:

http://copyrightreform.eventbrite.co.uk/

hatrickpatrick

blubloblu wrote: »

To play Devil's advocate, what about illegal content such as child pornography or defamatory material?

Arrest or prosecute the people responsible and confiscate their servers, perhaps.
The point here is that if information is available on the internet, the government must not have the power to selectively censor how much of it their citizens can access. Removing information from existence online is not the same as filtering it, the latter involves giving the government the keys to the digital "doorway" as it were, and this is unacceptable.

opti0nal

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Arrest or prosecute the people responsible and confiscate their servers, perhaps.
The point here is that if information is available on the internet, the government must not have the power to selectively censor how much of it their citizens can access.

It's not that simple. Content that may be legal in one country can be highly illegal in another. For example, various genres of pornography, distasteful, but completey legal in the US are very illegal in the UK.

We control what can be physically imported, so why not digital imports?

KyussBishop

Brilliant article, which highlights the bigger picture dangers of these copyright laws/treaties; particularly ACTA:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/01/guest-post-acta-%E2%80%9Cwould-usurp-congressional-authority%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%9Cthreatens-numerous-public-interests%E2%80%9D-a-%E2%80%9Cbackroom-special-interest-deal%E2%80%9D-a-%E2%80%9Cmasquera.html

It focuses on the US, but what happens in the US is the same as what eventually happens in Europe and the rest of the world as well; that is a must-read, as it portrays the broader issues behind these laws/treaties very well (in fact, it's one of the first articles I've read which do so in such a thorough way).