Geofeedia, In Damage Control Mode, Issues Bogus DMCA Over Brochure Posted By Reporter

from the copyright-as-censorship dept

And it's time for yet another story of copyright being used for out and out censorship. Remember Geofeedia? That's the creepy company that was selling its services to law enforcement agencies and school districts promising to spy on social media feeds to let law enforcement/schools know when people are planning bad stuff. After a big ACLU investigative report, basically all the major social media companies cut ties with Geofeedia, claiming that it was violating their terms of service. I'd imagine that the various law enforcement agencies and school districts who paid tens of thousands of dollars for this data may be asking for their money back.

So what does Geofeedia do? Well, for starters, it abuses the DMCA to try to take down information. The Daily Dot's Dell Cameron had actually written about how the Denver police spent $30k on Geofeedia back in September, a few weeks before the ACLU report dropped (nice scoop and great timing). Cameron then followed up with a detailed story following the ACLU report as well, noting that there were still plenty of other Geofeedia competitors on the market. At the end of that post, Cameron included a brochure that Geofeedia had apparently sent to a police department last year. But you can't see it now, because (yup) Geofeedia issued a DMCA takedown to Scribd, the company that was hosting it. Cameron tweeted about this as well, (correctly!) wondering why Scribd would fold over such a bogus copyright takedown. Now, sure, Geofeedia likely has a copyright on its brochure. But this is clearly a case of fair use. It's posted for reporting purposes, not competitive ones, on a topic of interest. It's not harming the market for the copyright in the brochure (which has no market). This is just ridiculous, both on the part of Geofeedia, and on Scribd for caving.

And it's pointless too, because it just calls more attention to how ridiculous Geofeedia is. Of all the things it should be focusing on right now, trying to take down a sales brochure in an article should be pretty low on its priority list. And if the idea was to get Daily Dot and Cameron to stop reporting on the company, well, that's failed too. Cameron has a new article out about how Geofeedia's stalking system was marketed to public schools as well.

Filed Under: censorship, dmca, takedowns
Companies: daily dot, geofeedia

Daily Dot Latest To 'Keep Conversation Moving Forward' By Not Letting Site Visitors Comment At All

from the muted dept

There's a raging trend afoot for websites to shutter their news comment sections, then insisting that they're doing this because they care so much about conversation on the Internet. A steady parade of websites have now stopped letting site visitors give public feedback, almost-proudly informing these muted site communities that this was done for the greater good of mankind. Really, companies just don't want to spend the time or money to weed the troll garden (or may not like having their writers publicly fact checked on site), and are shoving these communities toward social media to bury the "problem" permanently.

The name of the game is about being cheap and lazy without looking like you're being cheap and lazy, and the justifications being flung about by editorial staffs are equal part absurd and fascinating. Popular Science, for example, declared that on site discussion of news articles is "bad for science." The Verge recently decided to shutter news story comments to help "build relationships." Bloomberg recently killed news comments and insisted it wasn't a big deal because, hey, most people can't be bothered to comment and therefore news comments "don't represent our readership."

Few of these sites seem particularly concerned about the fact that shuttering comments makes it very clear they don't really value truly local community, and lack the willpower to nurture and protect on-site (or in app) participation. Nor do they seem to realize that data has shown that toxic comment sections can often be dramatically improved simply by engaging a little with readers.

The Daily Dot is the latest to put comments "on infinite hiatus," the site proclaiming it's basically giving up after a few of the bigger troll flare ups of the last few years:

This trend is about more than just raw engagement. It’s also about what kind of engagement we want to have. We’re at an interesting point in the history of the Web. In the wake of Gamergate, Celebgate, and the Reddit Meltdown of 2015, both publishers and social networks are grappling with the same fundamental issue: how to foster engagement and dialogue without inadvertently feeding the trolls in the process.

The solution: don't let anybody say anything publicly on your actual website. Ingenious! The site continues:

"The general consensus is that we need to detoxify the Web—to make it a cleaner, nicer, safer, and more inclusive place to live and work. Of course, at the Daily Dot, we would like to see a more civil, compassionate Web, but we want to be careful that in the name of fostering civility, we do not inadvertently kill all dissention.

The notion that you can somehow bring managed civility to the entire Internet seems like a fool's errand. You can bring civility to your own comment section, but again that takes time, money and effort that it's abundantly clear many websites aren't willing to provide. So instead we get esoteric, disingenuous, incoherent musings on how being too lazy to engage with your own readership will somehow save the broader Internet from the menacing troll hordes. Like other sites, The Daily Dot proclaims that "hey, we're still on social media" before dropping the now all-too-common line about how this is all about improving the conversation:

It’s a different route toward the same goal: to deliver the news to our readers, wherever they may live online, and to keep the conversation moving forward.

It's like putting duct tape on the mouths of everybody in town because of two jackasses at the pub, then proudly patting yourself on the back for spearheading an amazing revolution in kindness and communication. Obviously sites are free to insult and ignore on-site communities as they see fit, but it would be a notable improvement if they could do it without the nauseating hyperbolic claims that they're just trying to save the Internet from itself.

Filed Under: anonymity, comments, conversation, websites
Companies: daily dot