The Copyright Office Acts As Hollywood's Lobbying Arm... Because That's Basically How It's Been Designed

from the regulatory-capture dept

Last month, we wrote about a blog post by Public Knowledge questioning why the Copyright Office kept acting like a lobbying firm for Hollywood, often stepping into issues where it has no business and almost always pushing the Hollywood viewpoint. It turns out that was just a sneak peak of a much larger report that PK has now released on The Consequences of Regulatory Capture at the Copyright Office. The full 50-page report is worth a thorough read.

It details the obvious bits concerning the revolving door between copyright maximalists and the Copyright Office, with much of top management coming from jobs in the entertainment industries, and then many former top Copyright Office folks going right back into that industry upon leaving. But the more interesting part of the report is looking at how frequently the Copyright Office appears to blatantly misinterpret copyright law in an attempt to expand what the law actually covers.

From safe harbor provisions to statutory licenses, the Copyright Office has, for decades, misapplied, ignored, or “creatively interpreted” statutory and common law. It assumed a strained and flatly unfeasible reading of safe harbor provisions in order to strip websites of statutory legal protections when they are sued by certain sound recording rightsholders; concluded against the force of common and statutory law that a broad “making available” right existed where it does not; and mischaracterized key aspects of copyright law with regard to proceedings at the Federal Communications Commission, all in support of the position of rightsholders against other industries and the public

That seems like it should be a pretty big concern, no?

There are some eye-opening examples of problems as well. For example, the time when the Copyright Office provided a memo in a lawsuit the record labels had filed against Launch Media. It originally included a footnote saying that Launch Media was likely a "non-interactive service" (which has many, many fewer restrictions than an interactive one). Magically, the footnote was then updated to say it wasn't a non-interactive service, but an interactive one. What changed?

In a memorandum from Kenneth L. Steinthal, attorney for Launch, admitted into evidence at trial, Steinthal stated that he spoke with the individual in the Copyright Office who drafted the footnote. Steinthal stated that according to that individual, someone from the RIAA had called the Copyright Office and as a result, the substance of the footnote was changed.

Yup. Apparently the RIAA can just make a phone call, and the Copyright Office is willing to switch positions overnight.

The report also notes how the Copyright Office keeps expanding its own mandate, and keeps getting smacked around for it. The examples of courts looking skeptically at the Copyright Office is fairly telling:

Courts have repeatedly taken a dim view of the Copyright Office’s analysis of larger questions—and, on occasion, even of their judgment in their core function of issuing registrations. The Second Circuit in Vimeo took the Office to task, slamming its analysis of safe harbors in the Pre-1972 Sound Recordings report as “arbitrary and without legal foundation,” “incompatible with a literal and natural reading of the text,” and “based in major part on a misreading of the statute.” The Court also commented that the Office’s position was “[a]t the very least, a strained interpretation—one that could be justified only by concluding that Congress must have meant something different from what it said.”

The conclusion is that we need to rethink the Copyright Office and how it's set up:

The Copyright Office, isolated from effective mechanisms of governmental accountability, has become deeply and troublingly captured by major entertainment industries and other rightsholder interests. As a result, it has regularly disregarded the concerns of other stakeholders, such as libraries, archives, and the public at large. It has frequently aligned itself with the agendas of industry trade groups, pushed for expansion of copyright at the expense of consumers’ established rights, and published reports that embrace extreme interpretations that rise above and beyond the scope of settled law.

Of course, it's not too difficult to see how this came about. If you're not deep in the weeds of copyright issues, it's actually fairly natural to assume that the people who best understand copyright law are those in companies who use copyright law to their own advantage. Of course, that ignores that the very purpose of copyright law is not to benefit copyright holders, but the public (this is also something that the Copyright Office has, consistently, gotten wrong). But, that's like saying that the best banking regulators should be former bankers (oh wait...) and the best FCC commissioners should be ex-telco lawyers (oops). In the end, what we're seeing is pure regulatory capture, but it's especially troubling in the copyright context, given that copyright is explicitly designed with the benefits of the public in mind, and it's only over time (thanks to this kind of regulatory capture) that the mission has been warped and twisted to the false belief that maximizing copyright is important, rather than maximizing the public's benefit.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright office, hollywood, regulatory capture, revolving door
Companies: public knowledge

Consumer Groups Say AT&T, Comcast Violate Privacy Law By Hoovering Up Cable Box Data Without Full User Consent

from the informed,-empowered-consumers-cost-us-revenue dept

In addition to the $21 billion made annually by cable set top box rental fees, cable companies make untold billions from monetizing the user viewing data these boxes help collect. That captive revenue alone is the driving force behind the pay TV sectors histrionic opposition to the FCC's plan to open the sector up to third-party hardware competition. Consumer viewing and behavioral data is an immense cash cow, one the cable industry has occasionally threatened to take even further -- with patents on tech that lets the cable box literally watch or listen in on American living rooms.

While things haven't quite reached that level of total information awareness yet, consumer groups this week filed a formal complaint with both the FTC and FCC arguing that things have gone far enough. Public Knowledge, the Center for Digital Democracy and Consumer Watchdog have filed formal privacy complaints with both the FCC and FTC saying that major cable companies routinely fail to inform consumers about the degree in which their viewing data is collected, stored and monetized via ye olde cable box.

The complaints note that while most cable company privacy policies do alert consumers that they use personally identifiable information and third-party data for ads, these warnings don't go far enough to formally adhere to cable privacy rules on set-top box information:

"Federal law requires cable and satellite providers to obtain permission from subscribers prior to collecting and using their information for advertising purposes. Cable operators are also required to provide subscribers with a written statement that clearly describes the nature of the use of their personally identifiable information. Currently, cable operators obtain opt-out consent from consumers to use their information, which is insufficient to constitute prior consent under the law. And their privacy policies often fail to adequately disclose the extent to which they are sharing and combining customer data with third parties."

The complaints specifically single out Comcast, AT&T and Cablevision as "among the most egregious" when it comes to using consumer data without adequate consent. The complaint filed with the FCC (pdf) for example, notes that companies like AT&T often pull data from both the wireless and wireline empires to create mammoth databases of user behavior and personal information for targeted ads, without making the scope of this collection and usage clear to consumers or obtaining full, legal consent:

"AT&T’s TV Blueprint, for example, “gives advertisers working with AT&T the ability to reach people based on factors like device, operating system, whether or not they’re heavy data users or the status of their carrier contract,” using “sophisticated second-by-second set- top box data” and other information. AT&T pulls data “from millions of set-top boxes” and analyzes consumer viewing history and uses these data to target consumers based on their viewing profile. Companies like Cablevision leverage granular data and precise details of household viewing behavior, and combine it with third-party data covering other intimate details of consumers’ lives to analyze and target specific individuals with video advertising across a range of screens. In their own words, “this set-top box level targeting lets marketers target customers that fit particular trends, profiles, demographics and attributes, and they can also pair the Cablevision data with their own or third-party data."

With the FCC eyeing both set top box reform and new privacy rules for broadband providers, Public Knowledge is providing the commission with a little ammunition and fuel for thought on both fronts. Historically, consumer privacy in telecom and television has been feebly protected at best, and companies like AT&T have consistently pushed the barriers in their ever-expanding quest for more marketing data, whether that's the use of modified wireless packets to track users around the Internet, or charging a steep premium to opt out of deep packet inspection and data collection.

In the not-so-competitive realm of telecom, this is about as close to "innovation" as many sector companies get.

Specifically, Public Knowledge makes it clear they'd like to see such collection be made opt in instead of opt out, and argues that opting out doesn't go far enough to count as "consent" under existing privacy law:

"...The Commission should take the affirmative step of declaring that the use of customer information requires opt-in consent and that absent such consent, cable providers violate privacy rules by collecting customer information and using it to deliver marketing tailored to those customers."

As we've seen with the do not track debate, opting in is the bane of any data hoovering operation, given an informed and empowered consumer protected by a still-clawed regulator results in an obvious dent in the profit party. As such, telecom regulators have never been keen on supporting opt in, and it doesn't seem likely they'll start doing so anytime soon, despite the groups' request.

Meanwhile, AT&T was quick to unsurprisingly pooh pooh the groups' complaint as "bogus," while somehow arguing the attempt to protect consumer privacy would violate consumer privacy:

"AT&T’s use of anonymous and aggregate set-top box information is entirely consistent with the statute. Our disclosures tell our customers exactly how we use that data and provide tools for customers to opt out. Frankly, this complaint is bogus, and seems mainly designed to distract the public from the overwhelming bipartisan opposition to the FCC’s controversial set-top box plan.

That plan itself will erode existing consumer privacy protections, not to mention its many other harms. Because the plan’s few remaining supporters have no answer to that charge, they’ve decided to invent a false privacy claim. This smacks of desperation, and it also carries the whiff of hypocrisy. It’s further proof, if any is needed, that the plan’s supporters have lost the public policy debate on this issue."

AT&T somehow forgets to mention that most of the opposition to the FCC's set top box competition plan is entirely artificial -- generated in large part by AT&T and Comcast lobbying departments -- who've been busy filling editorial pages nationwide with absurd and misleading arguments.

The genuine reason for AT&T's opposition isn't surprising or complicated: ill-informed customers in un-competitive markets trapped in walled gardens are hugely profitable. Any deviation from this standard is treated as an egregious affront. But cable ops can't just come out and admit this is simply about protecting set top box monopoly money; that's why they've created groups like the "Future of TV Coalition" to try and complain -- like AT&T briefly does above -- that actually protecting cable customer privacy -- will somehow be a privacy violation in and of itself:

"But the new AllVid-style TV regulations being proposed by the FCC this week are an assault on consumer privacy. They will strip viewers of vital safeguards for their viewing choices and add “what we watch” to the mountains of data being mined and exploited by privacy scofflaws like Google, alongside their existing files of what we search for on the Internet; what we say in our gmail at home, work, and school; what happens in our “Nest”-connected homes; and where we go using Waze and Google Maps."

Cable companies could embrace opt in as a new standard and creatively offer small discounts to users who participate, but it's much easier to whine nebulously about Google. Companies like AT&T and Comcast desperately want to be regulated exactly like "edge providers" such as Google when it comes to privacy, ignoring the fact that their stranglehold over the broadband last mile -- and the cable box -- create a scenario whereby if regulators don't make at least a token effort to protect consumer privacy, the sky will be the limit in terms of abusing these captive markets and consumer walled gardens.

Filed Under: data, fcc, ftc, privacy, set top boxes
Companies: at&t, comcast, public knowledge

Computer Scientists, Legal Experts Explain To Supreme Court Why APIs Are Not Copyrightable

from the let's-try-this-again dept

Back in May, the appeals court for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) enhanced its reputation of consistently getting basic patent law wrong by deciding to get copyright law wrong too, in declaring that APIs were copyrightable subject matter, in the Oracle v. Google lawsuit. As we explained at the time, the court appeared to make some rather serious fundamental errors, not understanding the difference between software and interfaces (and worse, totally misquoting some experts). Last month, Google asked the Supreme Court to review the case. On Friday, a bunch of interesting amicus briefs were filed, asking the Supreme Court to fix the CAFC's big mistakes.

Perhaps the most interesting was put together by the EFF, and was signed by 77 computer scientists, including many of the most well-known and most respected computer scientists around, including Hal Abelson, Brian Behlendorf, Ward Cunningham, Peter Deutsch, David Dill, Dave Farber, Ed Felten, Mitch Kapor, Alan Kay, Brian Kernighan, Guido van Rossum, Avi Rubin, Bruce Schneier and Bjarne Stroustrup among others. There are a lot more, obviously, but those were just a few of the names that stood out.

The key point made in the filing is that this upsets decades of what was considered a settled matter in computer science, while highlighting how much of computer history was built off of the recognition of non-copyrightable APIs, allowing for the creation of interoperable systems, much of which drove the early computer revolution. Here's the summary from the brief:

For decades, computer scientists have relied on the open nature of APIs to enable rapid innovation in computer technology. For decades, circuit courts have supported that reliance, concluding that Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act protects a programmer’s source code as creative expression, but does not cover the processes, systems, and methods of operation that code may employ to interface with other software. The district court correctly followed that precedent and rejected Oracle’s claim that the Java APIs could be copyrightable. Sadly, the Federal Circuit chose to split with the other circuits and reverse the district court. That decision upended decades of industry practice and threatens the basic principles upon which our technology sector was built.

Not surprisingly, the Federal Circuit’s decision has been harshly criticized. As many commentators have noted, if the Federal Circuit’s view had been accepted at the birth of modern computing, many important technologies would never have existed, and/or succeeded. For example, the widespread availability of diverse, cheap, and customizable personal computers owes its existence to the lack of copyright on the specification for IBM’s Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) for the PC. And open APIs were essential to many modern computing developments, including those of operating systems such as UNIX, programming languages such as “C,” the Internet’s network protocols, and cloud computing.

Today, open, uncopyrightable APIs continue to spur the creation and adoption of new technologies. When programmers can freely reimplement or reverse engineer an API without obtaining a costly license or risking a lawsuit, they can create compatible software that the interface’s original creator might never have envisioned or had the resources to develop. Moreover, compatible APIs help enable people to switch platforms and services freely, and to find software that meets their needs regardless of what browser or operating system they use. Without the compatibility enabled by the open nature of APIs, consumers could be forced to leave their data and programs behind when they switch to a new service.

The freedom to reimplement APIs also helps developers rescue “orphan” software or data—systems that are no longer supported by their creators. When a company stops supporting a computer platform or service, the ability to freely reimplement APIs protects the communities that rely on that software. Government entities and non-profi ts are especially susceptible to the orphan programs problem as they often cannot afford to upgrade and are left using legacy technologies for years or decades.

Next up, is a filing from CCIA written in part by Jonathan Band, which is noteworthy in part because Band co-wrote the book on copyright and interfaces (first published nearly 20 years ago), explaining how interfaces aren't copyrightable and why that simple fact was responsible for so much of the computer revolution. This filing similarly notes how much of history was driven by interoperability, but also digs deeper into what a mess it would be if the CAFC's view was determined to be correct:

If a company could exercise proprietary control over the interface specifications implemented by its products, that company could determine which products made by other firms – if any – would be compatible with its software. And should that company have a dominant position in a particular market, it could use its control over compatibility to expand its dominant position into adjacent markets. Moreover, such authority would extend the rights under copyright beyond what is necessary to protect the original expressive elements that have traditionally been offered protection under American copyright law, and it would override limitations on copyright crafted to protect the public good.

Such a broad monopoly would have serious implications for consumer welfare. In the absence of competition during the effective lifespan of the product, the first developer would have little incentive to develop more innovative and less costly products. These negative consequences would be compounded by the fact that the personal computer revolution and the emergence of the Internet have produced an overwhelming need for interconnection between different elements of computer systems. Prohibiting competitors from accessing de facto standard interface specifications would lock users into a particular operating system or network software environment, and would inhibit the transfer of data between users with different computing environments.... The Petition shows a host of real-world problems and economic harms that would result if API copyright could foreclose compatibility, including the cost of rewriting interface code formerly understood to be unprotected, and lock-in costs resulting from consumers’ inability to switch operating systems or cloud computing providers.... Lock-in would deter competition, investment, and innovation in the burgeoning cloud computing industry, which is known to be sensitive to policy changes in copyright.

In short, in the computer industry, overly broad intellectual property protection directly restricts competition and innovation. This was the status quo in the computing environment in the 1970s. Once a buyer purchased a computer system, the buyer was essentially locked-in to that system: the system was incompatible with products manufactured by other companies, and conversion costs were high. Although “locking in” was extremely profitable for dominant vendors such as IBM, competitors and users suffered from high prices, indifferent service, limited choice, and slow innovation.

CCIA also reminds the Supreme Court that Oracle (and Sun) not to long ago were among those who fought strongly for the position that interfaces were not copyrightable and that interoperability should be allowed. The filing notes that Sun and Oracle fought hard against parts of the DMCA when it was introduced that would have blocked interoperability. For example:

In a 1998 press release, Michael Morris, then Vice President and General Counsel of Sun Microsystems, argued that the DMCA as introduced would “impose[ ] a new and unnecessary layer of restraint on lawful access to those unprotected elements of computer programs that are necessary to achieve interoperability, thus placing developers of interoperable products at the mercy of proprietary vendors.”

That resulted in changes to the DMCA to make sure that interoperability was allowed. And yet, now, Oracle (via its Sun acquisition) is trying to argue that the exact opposite is true.

Finally, Public Knowledge also submitted an interesting brief which lays out the ridiculous situation we're in today with an analogy using amusingly named stand-ins and products:

Say that Delphi Corporation manufactures screws. It hits upon a new design for a screw socket—the interface between screw and screwdriver—that is more efficient than the prevailing Phillips and flathead insertions. Capitalizing on this novel idea, Delphi manufactures a line of screws using this socket, which it calls Sumatra. The Sumatra socket is wildly popular. New lines of screwdrivers are made for the Sumatra socket. Engineering textbooks praise the Sumatra design. Wood-workers teach their sons and daughters to use it. And competing screw manufacturer Zillion decides to make its own screws compatible with the Sumatra socket. The screws otherwise differ, but use the Sumatra socket so that woodworkers need not purchase new tools.

Only then does Delphi declare the Sumatra socket a sculptural work, suing Zillion for copyright infringement.

Rather than focusing on more recent rulings concerning software, the Public Knowledge brief goes all the way back to Baker v. Selden from 1879, which found that you couldn't copyright a set of blank ledger forms.

Oracle repeatedly points to the “intricate web of connections" of the Java API, in an effort to suggest that its structure, sequence and organization of the API is copyrightable. Oracle Brief, supra, at 26. But so too can uncopyrightable blank forms constitute an intricate web of connections. Selden’s book included 19 forms and 24 pages of demonstrative explanation designed “to compress almost innumerable accounts under a few specific, intelligible heads.” .... For either blank forms or APIs, intricacy does not confer copyrightability.

Given that an API is factually on par with a blank form, it is unsurprising that the reasoning of Baker directly applies to the copyrightability of APIs. Baker held that blank ledger forms, including the “ruled lines and headings,” could not properly be the subject of copyright.... The Court said that copyright cannot cover “systems” or an “art”; the Java API is certainly a system, one that teaches the “art” of using the Java system....

The Java API is on all fours with the blank forms of Baker, both factually and legally. Since copying of the blank forms in Baker was permissible, copying of the Java API is too.

It's also nice to see the Public Knowledge brief call out the simple factual errors in the CAFC ruling (some of which we pointed out in our post at the time):

... the Federal Circuit misunderstands arguments that interfaces are more properly protected by patent law than copyright law... Google, several amici below, and the district court merely proffered the unremarkable argument that functional elements should be excluded from copyright law by § 102(b) and the idea/expression dichotomy... But the Federal Circuit mistook them to mean that software may only be patentable or copyrightable, but not both. The Federal Circuit further assumed that criticisms of software patents equate to suggestions to expand copyrightable subject matter to cover interfaces.

These propositions are flawed. First, the Federal Circuit t neglects that there is matter outside the realm of both copyright and patent; the court apparently supposed that every element of a software program must fit into one or the other. Second, the Federal Circuit fails to differentiate the discrete elements of a given software product that may be copyrightable and those that may be patentable, instead lumping those elements together into a single entity. Third, the Federal Circuit conflates programming interfaces with computer programs generally.

Hopefully, these and other arguments convince the Supreme Court of just how wrong the CAFC was in its ruling. Recently, the Supreme Court has been pretty bad on copyright cases, while generally good on patent cases, so it's always a little nerve-wracking when copyright cases get there. The one bit of good news is that the Supreme Court has clearly found itself regularly questioning CAFC's interpretation of laws, since most of those patent cases come up via CAFC. The only reason this copyright case went to CAFC was because it started out as a patent case, though the patent issues got tossed out early on.

Filed Under: api, apis, computer scientists, copyright, copyrightable subject matter, functions, interfaces, software
Companies: ccia, eff, google, oracle, public knowledge

Amicus Brief From Public Knowledge Distills Ultramercial's 'Complex' Patent To 16 Lines Of Code

from the one-rarely-sees-javascript-in-a-legal-filing dept

Public Knowledge has entered the battle against Ultramercial, the holder of a broad patent for an abstract idea that it has casually stapled "on the Internet" to in order to push it through the patent office. At one point the patent was rejected by the court, but Ultramercial repeatedly tapped the words "on the Internet" until the CAFC obligingly agreed that the insistent tapping had some merit and overturned the lower court's ruling.

WildTangent appealed this ruling in 2012, drawing immediate support from Redhat, the CCIA, Google (in conjunction with Verizon, no less) in the form of petitions for the Supreme Court to hear the case. A couple of months later, the Supreme Court vacated the CAFC's ruling, asking it to reconsider the case in light of Mayo v. Prometheus. As of Sept. 24th, Google [et al, incl. Redhat, HP, Zynga and Homeway, Inc.], the CCIA and the EFF have also filed amicus briefs on behalf of WildTangent, urging the CAFC to rule in a consistent manner on Ultramercial's patent in light of its decision on Mayo.

Public Knowledge's brief takes a somewhat novel approach, attacking the supposed complexity of the patent head on

Today, Public Knowledge filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to review an important case on software patents, WildTangent v. Ultramercial. The basic question in this case is whether a patent to a simple, abstract idea can be valid simply by tacking on enough legal and technical language to that idea, even if that extraneous language has no real meaning.

The patent in question is U.S. Patent No. 7,346,545. That patent basically describes a simple idea familiar to anyone who has watched videos on the Internet: the idea of taking a video available for purchase, and showing it for free in exchange for viewing an advertisement first.

As Public Knowledge points out, ideas aren't patentable and what Ultramercial has here is nothing more than an abstract idea obscured by layers of technical language.

Whoever wrote the patent on advertising in this case, however, was clever. Instead of simply describing the simple idea for what it is, the patent expounds an eleven-step process in a patent claim of 349 complex, technical-sounding words. This was enough to convince one court that the process required “intricate and complex computer programming,” thus making it patentable and not an abstract idea.

Public Knowledge's brief exposes the extremely simple underlying process of Ultramercial's patent. What took its patent lawyers 349 words to explain boils down to 16 lines of code -- hardly the indicator of "intricate and complex computer programming." As a demonstration in PK's blog post, Charles Duan turns the following process steps into two (short) lines of code.

As an example, here are two steps of the process claimed in the patent.

"a fifth step of offering to a consumer access to the media product without charge to the consumer on the precondition that the consumer views the sponsor message;

a sixth step of receiving from the consumer a request to view the sponsor message, wherein the consumer submits said request in response to being offered access to the media product;

a seventh step of, in response to receiving the request from the consumer, facilitating the display of a sponsor message to the consumer;"

For all those words, here's the computer code that implements them:

if (window.confirm("View ad or buy?")) {
window.alert(selected_ad.text)

82 words and three complex sentences reduced to 11 words of code spanning two lines. Duan refers to Ultimecia's Ultramercial's dense faux-technical jargon as "legal filibustering," a process used to hide simplicity behind dense walls of text in order to confuse gatekeepers into submission.

And if no one believes it's that simple, Public Knowledge has provided a working version of its sixteen lines of code at this URL.

Here's the process Ultramercial's suing about in all of its 16-lines-of-code glory.


As Mike has pointed out before, the only reason Ultramercial even has this patent is because it convinced the CAFC that the addition of "on the Internet" turns an abstract idea into a patentable process. The additional wording describing the "process" is a diversionary tactic. Hopefully, a second run through will find the CAFC willing to cut through the dense wording and ridiculous "Internet" assertion and find Ultramercial's patent invalid.

Filed Under: amicus brief, on the internet, patents
Companies: public knowledge, ultramercial, wild tangent

EFF Files Massive Lawsuit Over NSA Surveillance: Gun Rights, Civil Liberties Groups, Religious Groups Team Up

from the one-to-watch dept

While there have been a number of lawsuits already filed over the NSA's surveillance program, the EFF has just jumped in in a big way. Representing a variety of advocacy groups, religious groups and even a gun maker, the lawsuit makes the case that the dragnet surveillance violates the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments. The plaintiffs in the case include the First Unitarian Church of LA, Greenpeace, Calguns, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees, Council on American Islamic Relations, the Franklin Armory, Free Press, Tech Freedom, Public Knowledge, the Free Software Foundation, Human Rights Watch, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), the Open Technology Institute, People for the American Way and Students for Sensible Drug Policy. It's a pretty wide-ranging group of folks who don't normally agree on much (in fact, some of them probably disagree with each other, vehemently, on a number of issues). But they've come together for this.

The First Amendment argument is basically that this is chilling these organizations' right to communicate anonymously:

Defendants have violated and are violating the First Amendment free speech and free association rights of Plaintiffs, their members, and their staffs, including the right to communicate anonymously, the right to associate privately, and the right to engage in political advocacy free from government interference.

By their acts alleged herein, Defendants have chilled and/or threaten to chill the legal associations and speech of Plaintiffs, their members, and their staffs, by among other things, compelling the disclosure of their political and other associations.

Of the three main arguments, this is the one that I think may be the weakest, and the easiest for the courts to dismiss -- but I hope I'm wrong. The Fourth Amendment claim is clearly the strongest:

Plaintiffs have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their telephone communications, including in their telephone communications information.

By the acts alleged herein, Defendants have violated Plaintiffs' reasonable expectations of privacy and denied Plaintiffs their right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, including, but not limited to, obtaining per se unreasonable general warrants. Defendants have further violated Plaintiffs' rights by failing to apply to a court for, and for a court to issue, a warrant prior to any search and seizure as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

And then there's the Fifth Amendment argument, that we've been hearing a few people make recently:

Plaintiffs, their members, and their staffs have an informational privacy interest in their telephone communications information, which reveals sensitive information about their personal, political, and religious activities and which Plaintiffs do not ordinarily disclose to the public or the government. This privacy interest is protected by state and federal laws relating to privacy of communications records and the substantive and procedural right to due process guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment.

Defendants through their Associational Tracking Program secretly collect, acquire, retain, search, and use the bulk telephone communications information of Plaintiffs, their members and their staff without providing notice to them, or process by which they could seek redress. Defendants provide no process adequate to protect their interests.

As part of this 5th Amendment argument, they point out that secret FISA Court interpretations of the law would seem to violate basic due process as well.

This legal interpretation of 50 U.S.C. § 1861 is not available to the general public, including Plaintiffs, their members and their staff, leaving them and all other persons uncertain about where a reasonable expectation of privacy from government intrusion begins and ends and specifically what conduct may subject them to electronic surveillance.

This secret legal interpretation of 50 U.S.C. § 1861, together with provisions of the FISA statutory scheme that insulate legal interpretations from public disclosure and adversarial process, fails to establish minimal guidelines to govern law enforcement and/or intelligence collection.

The secret legal interpretation of 50 U.S.C. § 1861 used in the Associational Tracking Program and related surveillance progras causes section 1861 to be unconstitutionally vague in violation of the Fifth Amendment and the rule of law. The statute on its face gives no notice that it could be construed to authorize the bulk collection of telephone communications information for use in future investigations that do not yet exist.

As mentioned, there are a number of similar lawsuits, and I wouldn't be surprised to see some of them lumped together at some point, but this one should be an interesting one to follow.

Filed Under: due process, fifth amendment, first amendment, fourth amendment, free speech, gun rights, nsa, nsa surveillance, privacy
Companies: calguns, eff, first unitarian church of la, franklin armory, greenpeace, human rights watch, public knowledge

Appeal Over Former RIAA Lobbyist Judge Allowing Prenda To Get Info On Over 1,000 John Does Moves Forward

from the doesn't-that-look-silly-now dept

You may recall Judge Beryl Howell, the former RIAA lobbyist who helped author the DMCA, and also went against a very large number of other judges dealing with copyright trolling lawsuits by ruling that it was perfectly fine to lump over 1,000 John Doe defendants into a single lawsuit and then get discovery on them for the purpose of shaking them down for payment. While so many other courts have ruled that such lumping together is an abuse of the legal system in misjoining unrelated parties, Howell not only stuck to her guns, but then proceeded to blame ISPs for copyright trolls, suggesting that if they just did more to crack down on infringing, trolls wouldn't be a problem.

What you may not remember is that the key case in which Howell did this happens to be a case involving... you guessed it... AF Holdings and its "law firm" Prenda Law. Oh, and the "copyright assignment" that AF Holdings is using for this case was one of those supposedly signed by... Alan Cooper. While Judge Howell may be well served to pay attention to Judge Otis Wright in California and his actual investigation into Prenda/AF Holdings/Alan Cooper, the case is out of her hands for now, as the various ISPs who have the info in this particular case have appealed Howell's ruling and the EFF, ACLU, Public Citizen and Public Knowledge have stepped in as well with additional arguments in an amicus brief.

Both briefs are well worth reading, though you might be surprised that the amicus brief is probably the more reserved of the two. The ISPs who took part include: Bright House, Cox, Verizon, AT&T and Comcast -- with most of them (Verizon and Comcast being the exceptions) not even providing service in the jurisdiction of the district court: Washington DC. Comcast joining in is interesting, given that they own NBC, but we'll leave that aside for now. To put it mildly, the ISPs think the appeals court should put an end to these kinds of cases, noting that a majority of other courts have refused to allow joinder on so many defendants, and have blocked the discovery process. It points out, of course, that these cases are almost never taken to court, but are usually just used to reveal names and then offer settlement demands. Specifically, they feel that Howell made a pretty big legal mistake, in that a showing of "good cause" is required for discovery, and Howell ignored that.

The district court’s conclusion that rules governing personal jurisdiction and venue provide no impediment to pre-Rule 26 discovery of the ISPs is legal error. A showing of “good cause,” which is required for discovery ostensibly intended to identify defendants, requires an evaluation of whether the information sought from the ISPs would be used to name and serve defendants in the forum. See, e.g., Oppenheimer Fund, Inc. v. Sanders, 437 U.S. 340, 352-53 & n.17 (1978) (where “the purpose of a discovery request is to gather information for use in proceedings other than the pending suit, discovery properly is denied”). The Copyright Act and the District of Columbia’s long-arm statute limit the court’s reach to defendants who reside in the district. And the uncontroverted evidence before the district court showed that few, if any, of the targeted Internet subscribers reside in the District of Columbia—as publicly available geolocation software used by Plaintiff’s counsel in other cases confirms. The district court’s decision to defer any consideration of personal jurisdiction or venue until after the subscribers’ personal information had been disclosed to Plaintiff requires reversal.

The court’s decision to permit discovery of the ISPs before deciding whether the 1,000-plus “Does” are misjoined provides an additional basis for reversal. Plaintiff, by routinely declining to name and serve defendants after obtaining the subscribers’ personal information, virtually ensures that Rule 20’s requirements for joinder will go unaddressed if not evaluated at the outset. And as a growing majority of courts have concluded, deferring a ruling on joinder deprives the courts of filing fees and encourages a proliferation of improperly coercive lawsuits. Given the groundswell of published opinions that disagree with the lower court and have severed or dismissed non-resident “Does” or all Does except for “Doe No. 1,” deferring a ruling on joinder in a suit that seeks nationwide subscriber information also encourages forum shopping—as the record here shows persuasively.

The ISPs also, quite reasonably, point out that if mass joinder and discovery is allowed in this case, the trolls will descend on the DC Circuit courts in a mass forum shopping situation:

The record reflects that Plaintiff’s counsel’s cases have migrated across the country, with the venues selected, not by the locus of the parties or situs of harm, but based on counsel’s perceptions of which forum is most likely to authorize the greatest discovery, at the lowest cost, with the least judicial oversight.

The specter of intra-district, judge-specific shopping in Plaintiff’s counsel’s cases further underscores the problem with the lower court’s approach. The ISPs raised below Plaintiff’s counsel’s practice of filing complaints and dismissing them vel non based on the judicial assignment—only to re-file in another court. When presented with the same facts, Judge Wilkins quoted with approval Judge Huvelle’s finding: “Plaintiff’s actions a[re] akin to ‘judge shopping.’… This Court could not agree more.” ...

The ISPs respectfully submit that the district courts in this Circuit should not be the destination for 1,000-plus Doe cases that are brought primarily to compile mailing lists—not to adjudicate actual cases or controversies.

The ISPs also go through, in detail, the accusations against Team Prenda, and the claims of Alan Cooper. As it notes:

AF Holdings and its counsel owe a duty of candor to the Court, and a duty of fairness to appellants.... The serious issues concerning attorney misconduct and potentially forged documents were not identified for the court below; they necessarily affect the “good cause” analysis and provide an alternative basis for reversal to address the evidence now being considered in the pending disciplinary proceedings in the Central District of California.

The EFF/ACLU/PK/PC filing is more focused on the specific errors in Howell's ruling, concerning the "good faith" standard for discovery and the mass joinder of over 1,000 people. They also point out the jurisdiction problems of the defendants who are clearly outside the jurisdiction of a DC court -- and the fact that these cases rarely end up in actual lawsuits means that the question of proper venue will not be "cured" later. Finally, the brief argues that Howell ignored key First Amendment issues concerning revealing anonymous internet users, and the higher standard for them to be revealed. This argument wasn't made by the ISPs, so we'll focus on that one here. It points to the key Dendrite standard we've discussed many times before concerning the revealing of anonymous users. This does not mean that you cannot identify those accused of copyright infringement, but rather that you can't go on a random fishing expedition to get names, as many copyright trolls have done.

Specifically, in a series of cases beginning with Dendrite Int’l, Inc. v. Doe No. 3, 775 A.2d 756, 760-61, 342 N.J. Super. 134 (App. Div. 2001), courts have adopted a balancing standard to assess requests for early discovery to identify anonymous online speakers that protects the right to speak anonymously while at the same time ensuring that plaintiffs who have valid claims are able to pursue them. Without such a standard, abusive plaintiffs could too easily use extrajudicial means against defendants from whom they could not, in the end, obtain judicial redress. See Levy, Litigating Civil Subpoenas to Identify Anonymous Internet Speakers, 37 Litigation No. 3 (Spring 2011).

The use of BitTorrent to select and share movies is expressive and, therefore, protected by the First Amendment. Call of the Wild Movie, 770 F. Supp. 2d at 350 (“[F]ile-sharers are engaged in expressive activity, on some level, when they share files on BitTorrent, and their First Amendment rights must be considered before the Court allows the plaintiffs to override the putative defendants’ anonymity.”).

Although the expressive aspect of the conduct alleged here – the posting of copyrighted movies to BitTorrent – is somewhat minimal, that does not mean that discovery to identify the anonymous user without adequate initial evidence that individual Doe Defendants committed the alleged infringement. The weakness of AF Holdings’ assertions of personal jurisdiction and proper joinder means that First Amendment concerns weigh more strongly here in favor of quashing the subpoenas. Certainly it was not appropriate for the district court to ignore the question altogether.

It will be interesting not only to see how the appeals court deals with it... but also Prenda's argument, since they seem to be getting more and more wacky lately.

Filed Under: appeal, beryl howell, copyright trolls, discovery, joinder
Companies: aclu, af holdings, at&t, bright house, comcast, cox, eff, prenda, prenda law, public citizen, public knowledge, riaa, verizon

The USPTO's Reality Distortion Field: Web Filter Blocks Critics Like EFF, Welcomes Maximalist Lobbyists

from the but-techdirt's-available dept

Updated: At 5pm ET, the USPTO called Jamie to say that a contractor had set this up, and after reviewing their policies, they had stopped blocking such sites...

Well this is bizarre. Jamie Love from KEI was over at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a meeting about "global negotiations on intellectual property and access to medicine." The meeting itself was held in a room that it uses for the USPTO's Global Intellectual Property Academy (GIPA), and there is free WiFi for people to use. Love tried to log onto his own website... and found that it was being blocked as a "political/activist group."

Access Denied (content_filter_denied)

Your request was denied because this URL contains content that is categorized as: "Political/Activist Groups" which is blocked by USPTO policy. If you believe the categorization is inaccurate, please contact the USPTO Service Desk and request a manual review of the URL.

For assistance, contact USPTO OCIO IT Service Desk. (io-proxy4)

Love then checked a bunch of other sites... and noticed a rather distressing pattern. For public interest groups who advocate that the existing copyright/patent system is broken, the websites were all blocked. ACLU, EFF, Public Knowledge, Public Citizen, CDT... all blocked. However, if you're a lobbyist for maximalism? No problem! MPAA, RIAA, IIPA, IPI, PHRMA, BSA... come on through. They do allow Creative Commons. Thankfully (for us, at least), they don't seem to block blogs that talk about this stuff. Techdirt is allowed, as are things like BoingBoing, Groklaw and Larry Lessig and Michael Geist's blogs. Though, oddly, a bunch of political sites (DailyKos, TPM, RedState, Rush Limgaugh's site) are blocked.

It may be an "over active" filter -- but it does seem particularly disturbing that all those groups who fight for the public's rights on the very issues the USPTO is dealing with on a regular basis have their sites completely blocked.

Filed Under: advocacy, uspto, web filter
Companies: aclu, bsa, cdt, eff, iipa, ipi, kei, mpaa, phrma, public citizen, public knowledge, riaa

New Platform Launched To Crowdsource Better Internet-Related Regulation... With Expert Help

from the hybrid-approach dept

In the wake of the SOPA/PIPA fight, there have been more and more efforts to use the interest in keeping the internet free and open in a more proactive manner, rather than just reactive. We've already talked about the Reddit community crowdsourcing a law, as well as our own attempt at crowdsourcing an internet innovation agenda (which is generating some interesting discussions). Within Congress, there is also the Madison platform, which was used to crowdsource feedback on Darrell Issa and Ron Wyden's OPEN Act, and suggests an interesting way that bills should be presented for feedback.

However, as many people have noted, there have been some limitations to these efforts. With the Reddit example, what comes out of a totally open system for generating laws has been a little... messy so far. It's pretty clear that the drafts coming out have significant problems and so far seem pretty disconnected from any actual policy objectives, and thus seem unlikely to actually get anywhere. That could change over time, and I'm still eager to see what happens with it, but watching the process is at times cringe-worthy, as you think about how just a little help from people who actually know how this stuff works might help speed things along. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the Madison platform, while a nice idea, still relies on someone in Congress to have a bill ready to go -- and many of the complaints about the platform (such as those seen in the article linked above) are that it really discourages participation.

Is there a middle ground approach to all of this? The folks at Public Knowledge seem to think so, as they've launched a rather interesting project called the Internet Blueprint. Unfortunately, I think the design needs a lot of work, as it's not entirely clear how it works, but the idea behind the site is that users can submit ideas for legislation. From there, people can vote. Similar to the White House's "We The People" petition site, if a proposal reaches a specific threshold of votes, Public Knowledge will then get actual legislative language written up, either by themselves or by other experts (or may explain why a certain bill can't be written up, if that's the case).

Then, once a bill is ready, the site can list out Congressional (or organizational) supporters to champion the bill. Initially, they're starting out with five specific bills that I think many people around here will appreciate:

1. Curb Abuses of Copyright Takedowns
2. Ensure Openness in International IP Negotiations
3. Permit Lawful Uses of Copyrighted Content
4. Reduce Copyright Abuse and Overreach
5. Shorten Copyright Terms

In other words, this is something of a hybrid approach. Rather than a full on crowdsourced version, like Reddit, this has an initial proposal and voting period, but then someone with experience in actually writing legislative language helps out. This is a beta launch, and I know Public Knowledge has a lot more planned, so while I think the platform is a bit limited right now, I'm excited to see what comes out of it. For example, I hope they work on cleaning up the design, but also it would be nice to allow more commentary and feedback on the bills already submitted (more like the Madison platform). If they could combine all of those features, the overall system could be really quite useful.

Filed Under: crowdsourcing, internet blueprint, legislation
Companies: public knowledge