Danish Court Confirms Insane 'Little Mermaid' Copyright Ruling Against Newspaper Over Cartoon

from the under-the-'c' dept

If you haven't been a long time Techdirt reader, you'll probably hear me say that there is a copyright infringement court case in Denmark and immediately wonder, "Yeesh, what did Disney do now?" But this is not a story about Disney. This is a story about the heirs of Edvard Eriksen, creator of a bronze statue of The Little Mermaid, inspired by the classic Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, and their inability to let anyone in any way depict the statue or anything similar without being accosted in copyright actions. Most of the bullying actions by Eriksen's heirs have been, unbelievably, against other towns throughout the world for creating their own Little Mermaid statues: Greenville, Michigan and the Danish city of Asaa for example.

But less known are all the times Eriksen's heirs have gone after publications for showing pictures or other depictions of the statue. I won't pretend to be an expert in Danish copyright law, but if that country's laws are such that a newspaper or magazine cannot show a picture of one of the country's most famous landmarks, then that law is silly and should be changed or amended. Lest you think I must have this wrong, you can see a recent story of, not one, but two courts ruling that a newspaper must compensate Eriksen's heirs for a cartoon that depicted the statue on its pages.

An appeals court in Denmark has increased the compensation a newspaper was ordered to pay for violating the copyright of Copenhagen's The Little Mermaid statue with a cartoon depicting the bronze landmark as a zombie and a photo of it with a facemask.

The Berlingske newspaper published the cartoon in 2019 to illustrate an article about the debate culture in Denmark and used the photo in 2020 to represent a link between the far right and people fearing COVID-19.

For those of us reading this news in America, as well as many other nations, this all looks completely laughable. This is purely free speech stuff, protected in America by the First Amendment. Even getting past that, a cartoon of a statue is not a recreation of that statue, therefore copyright wouldn't even really apply. Plus it's parody and being used for commentary. Nothing about this makes sense.

And, yet, it must in Denmark because this 2nd court not only affirmed the ruling of the lower court but actually increased the compensation the newspaper was ordered to pay Eriksen's heirs.

Both were found to be infringements of the Danish Copyright Act. Copenhagen’s district court ordered the newspaper in 2020 to pay the heirs of Danish sculptor Edvard Eriksen 285,000 kroner ($44,000) in compensation. The appeals court on Wednesday raised the amount to 300,000 kroner ($46,000).

In a statement, the Eastern High Court in the Danish capital agreed with the lower court that “there was a violation of copyright" in the newspaper's actions. It did not give a reason for increasing the compensation amount but noted that Berlingske is a commercial venture since it wants to sell newspapers.

Again, this is all absurd. If the above rulings truly do comport with Danish copyright law, then all that suggests is that there needs to be an active movement in Denmark to amend the law. And, just to make this all the more frustrating, the copyright protections in Denmark are familiar: 70 years after the death of the author. In this case, that means Eriksen's heirs will only have this ability to bilk others for cash payments for the statue for another seven years.

Filed Under: cartoon, copyright, denmark, erik eriksen, little mermaid, newspapers

Analog Books Go From Strength To Strength: Helped, Not Hindered, By The Digital World

from the technology-is-not-destroying-culture dept

Many of the worst ideas in recent copyright laws have been driven by some influential companies’ fear of the transition from analog to digital. Whereas analog formats – vinyl, books, cinematic releases of films – are relatively easy to control, digital ones are not. Once a creation is in a digital form, anyone can make copies and distribute them on the Internet. Traditional copyright industries seem to think that digital versions of everything will be freely available everywhere, and that no one will ever buy analog versions. That’s not the case with vinyl records, and a recent post on Publisher’s Weekly suggests that analog books too, far from dying, are going from strength to strength:

Led by the fiction categories, unit sales of print books rose 8.9% in 2021 over 2020 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Units sold were 825.7 million last year, up from 757.9 million in 2020. BookScan captures approximately 85% of all print sales. In 2020, unit sales were up 8.2% over 2019, which saw 693.7 million print units sold.

The young adult fiction segment had the largest increase, with unit sales jumping 30.7%, while adult fiction sales rose 25.5%. Sales in the juvenile fiction category increased 9.6%.

The two years of increased sales is part of a longer-term trend, as this article from the New York Times in 2015 indicates:

the digital apocalypse never arrived, or at least not on schedule. While analysts once predicted that e-books would overtake print by 2015, digital sales have instead slowed sharply.

Now, there are signs that some e-book adopters are returning to print, or becoming hybrid readers, who juggle devices and paper. E-book sales fell by 10 percent in the first five months of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers, which collects data from nearly 1,200 publishers. Digital books accounted last year for around 20 percent of the market, roughly the same as they did a few years ago.

Digital formats possess certain advantages over analog ones, notably convenience. Today, you can access tens of millions of tracks online with music streaming services, and carry around thousands of ebooks on your phone. But many people evidently continue to appreciate the physicality of analog books, just as they like and buy vinyl records. The Publisher’s Weekly article also shows how the digital world is driving analog sales:

Gains in the young adult category were helped by several titles that benefitted from attention drummed up by BookTok, users of the social media platform TikTok who post about their favorite books. They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera, released in December 2018, was the #1 title in the category, selling nearly 685,000 copies.

As a recent post on Walled Culture noted, if publishing companies were less paranoid about people sharing snippets of the books they love, on BookTok and elsewhere, the already significant analog sales they produce could be even higher. If the copyright industries want to derive the maximum benefit from the online world, they need to be brave, not bullying, as they so often are today.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.

Originally posted to Walled Culture.

Filed Under: books, complementary markets, digital paper books, ebooks

Declassified Documents Shows The CIA Is Using A 1981 Executive Order To Engage In Domestic Surveillance

from the bypassing-checks,-balances,-and-oversight-with-Executive-power dept

When most people think of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), they think of a foreign-facing spy agency with a long history of state sponsored coup attempts (some successful!), attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, and putting the US in the torture business. What most people don't assume about the CIA is that it's also spying on Americans. After all, we prefer our embarrassments to be foreign-facing -- something that targets (and affects) people we don't really care about and governments we have been told are irredeemable.

An entity with the power to provoke military action halfway around the world has periodically shown an unhealthy interest in domestic affairs, which are supposed to be off-limits for the nation's most morally suspect spies. The CIA (along with the FBI) routinely abuses its powers to perform backdoor searches of foreign surveillance stashes to locate US-based communications. It also has asked the FBI to do its dirty secondhand surveillance work for it in order to bypass restrictions baked into Executive Order 12333 -- an executive order issued by Ronald Reagan that significantly expanded surveillance permissions for US agencies.

Perhaps most significantly -- at least in terms of this report -- the order instructed other government agencies to be more compliant with CIA requests for information. Since its debut in December 1981, the order has been modified twice (by George W. Bush) to give the government more power.

That's the authority the CIA has been using to spy on Americans, as a recent PCLOB (Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board) report shows. The PCLOB performed a "deep dive" in CIA domestic spying at the request of Senators Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich. After its completion, the senators asked for an unclassified version of the PCLOB's report. That report has arrived. And, according to Ron Wyden's statements, it shows the CIA is utilizing EO 12333 to spy on Americans and bypass the protections (however minimal) the FISA court provides to Americans.

“FISA gets all the attention because of the periodic congressional reauthorizations and the release of DOJ, ODNI and FISA Court documents,” said Senators Wyden and Heinrich in response to the newly declassified documents. “But what these documents demonstrate is that many of the same concerns that Americans have about their privacy and civil liberties also apply to how the CIA collects and handles information under executive order and outside the FISA law. In particular, these documents reveal serious problems associated with warrantless backdoor searches of Americans, the same issue that has generated bipartisan concern in the FISA context.”

Wyden and Heinrich called for more transparency from the CIA, including what kind of records were collected and the legal framework for the collection. The PCLOB report noted problems with CIA’s handling and searching of Americans’ information under the program.

Even if the spying isn't direct, the outcome is pretty much identical to direct targeting. With EO 12333, the CIA obtains the compliance from other federal agencies envisioned by Ronald Reagan back in 1981 as his administration ran headlong into the CIA-implicating Iran-Contra scandal.

Domestic data is supposed to be "masked" if incidentally acquired by foreign-facing surveillance collections. Sometimes this simply doesn't happen. Sometimes unmasking occurs without proper permission or oversight. The FBI uses this to its advantage. So does the CIA. But the FBI handles domestic terrorism. The CIA does not. That makes the CIA's abuse possibly more egregious than the FBI's numerous violations of the same restrictions placed on domestic surveillance via foreign interception of communications by the NSA.

The PCLOB report [PDF] shows the CIA has obtained bulk financial data from other sources, possibly without proper masking of incidentally-collected US persons data. According to the CIA's response to the report, the only thing separating CIA analysts from US persons' data and communications is a pop-up box warning them that access may be illegal. This is only a warning. It does not (nor could it) prevent analysts from obtaining data they shouldn't have access to without explicit permission.

How extensive this "incidental" collection is remains to be seen. And there's a good chance no one will ever know how often this pop-up was ignored to collect data generated by US citizens and residents. Much of the report is redacted and what was shared with the PCLOB was limited to whatever the CIA felt like sharing. The oversight of programs like these is deliberately limited by the Executive Order -- one that made the assumption some things (like national security) are too important to be done properly or overseen directly.

The report does note that the CIA has internal processes to limit abuse of backdoor searches. But it also points out the CIA has read EO 12333 and its modifications to mean it can do what it wants when it wants without worrying too much about straying outside of the generous lines drawn by this Executive Order.

The limits include a requirement to use the “least intrusive collection techniques feasible within the United States or directed against United States persons abroad.” Annex A implements E.O. 12333’s “least intrusive collection technique” requirement regarding activities outside of the United States involving U.S. persons. Given that the Executive Order’s restriction only applies to activities in the United States or activities directed against U.S. persons abroad, the CIA interprets the language of Annex A to only apply to collections directed against USPs abroad. Annex A does not require [redacted] to apply the least intrusive collection technique to collections covered by this report, which are generally not directed against USPs.

There's the exploitable loop: the EO only applies to collections "directed" at US persons. Since all information is pulled from foreign-facing surveillance collections that "incidentally" collect US persons data, the resulting collection the CIA has access to is completely legal. Analysts access these collections specifically to find US persons' data, but because no agency deliberately targeted US persons, it's all above board.

This is the exploitation of foreign bulk collections to obtain information about Americans. While some may argue the damage is minimal because it only accesses information (financial records) unlikely to have an established expectation of privacy, people obviously know their financial institutions track their purchases, but that's not the same thing as people assuming the government should be able to access records -- which may contain sensitive information -- using nothing more than an Executive Order that was ostensibly written to strengthen foreign surveillance efforts.

And that's only what can be observed from this redacted release. This isn't the CIA's only attempt to hoover up info on US persons via side channels. Wyden's letter hints at FISA reforms, which likely refers to domestic phone records the NSA used to collect in bulk -- a program that was specifically targeted by Congress following the Snowden revelations. What's contained in this report is a narrow examination of one part of the CIA's exploitation of bulk collections to obtain US persons data. And if it feels this confident about its nearly unrestricted ability to perform these backdoor searches, examinations of other aspects of this program are likely to find other domestic data is ending up in the hands of CIA analysts who are supposed to be focused on foreign activities.

Filed Under: cia, domestic surveillance, eo 12333, executive order, pclob, ron wyden, surveillance

Can We Compare Dot-Com Bubble To Today's Web3/Blockchain Craze?

from the predictions-are-difficult,-especially-about-the-future dept

Recently, I re-read through various discussions about the “dot-com bubble.” Surprisingly, it sounded all too familiar. I realized there are many similarities to today's techno-optimism and techno-pessimism around Web3 and Blockchain. We have people hyping up the future promises, while others express concerns about the bubble.

The Dot-Com Outspoken Optimism

In the mid-1990s, the dot-com boom was starting to gather steam. The key players in the tech ecosystem had blind faith in the inherent good of computers. Their vision of the future represented the broader Silicon Valley culture and the claim that the digital revolution “would bring an era of transformative abundance and prosperity.” Leading tech commentators celebrated the potential for advancing democracy and empowering people.

Most tech reporting pitted the creative force of technological innovation against established powers trying to tame its disruptive inevitability. Tech companies, in this storyline, represented the young and irreverent, gleefully smashing old traditions and hierarchies. The narrative was around “the mystique of the founders,” recalled Rowan Benecke. It was about “the brashness, the arrogance, but also the brilliance of these executives who were daring to take on established industries to find a better way.”

David Karpf examined “25 years of WIRED predictions” and looked back at how both Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 imagined a future that upended traditional economics: “We were all going to be millionaires, all going to be creators, all going to be collaborators.” However, “The bright future of abundance has, time and again, been waylaid by the present realities of earnings reports, venture investments, and shareholder capitalism. On its way to the many, the new wealth has consistently been diverted up to the few.”

The Dot-Com Outspoken Pessimism

During the dot-com boom, the theme around its predicted burst was actually prominent. “At the time, there were still people who said, ‘Silicon Valley is a bubble; this is all about to burst. None of these apps have a workable business model,’” said Casey Newton. “There was a lot of really negative coverage focused on ‘These businesses are going to collapse.’”

Kara Swisher shared that in the 1990s, a lot of the coverage was, “Look at this new cool thing.” But also, “the initial coverage was ‘this is a Ponzi scheme,’ or ‘this is not going to happen.’ When the Internet came, there was a huge amount of doubt about its efficacy. Way before it was doubt about the economics, it was doubt about whether anyone was going to use it,” Then, “it became clear that there was a lot of money to be made; the ‘gold rush’ mentality was on.”

At the end of 1999, this gold rush was mocked by San Francisco Magazine. “The Greed Issue” featured the headline “Made your Million Yet?” and stated that “Three local renegades have made it easy for all of us to hit it big trading online. Yeah…right.” Soon after, came the dot-com implosion.

“In 2000, the coverage became more critical,” explained Nick Wingfield. There was a sense that, “You do have to pay attention to profitability and to create sustainable businesses.” “There was this new economy, where you didn’t need to make profits, you just needed to get a product to market and to grow a market share and to grow eyeballs,” added Rowan Benecke. “It was ultimately its downfall at the dot-com crash.”

The Blockchain is Partying Like It’s 1999

While VCs are aggressively promoting Web3 - Crypto, NFTs, decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, and a bunch of other Blockchain stuff - they are also getting more pushback. See, for example, the latest Mark Andreesen Twitter fight with Jack Dorsey, or listen to Box CEO Aaron Levie's conversation with Alex Kantrowitz. The reason the debate is heated is, in part, due to the amount of money being poured into it.

Web3 Outspoken Optimism

Andreessen Horowitz, for example, has just launched a new $2.2 billion cryptocurrency-focused fund. “The size of this fund speaks to the size of the opportunity before us: crypto is not only the future of finance but, as with the internet in the early days, is poised to transform all aspects of our lives,” a16z’s cryptocurrency group announced in a blog post. “We’re going all-in on the talented, visionary founders who are determined to be part of crypto’s next chapter.”

The vision of Web3’s believers is incredibly optimistic: “Developers, investors and early adopters imagine a future in which the technologies that enable Bitcoin and Ethereum will break up the concentrated power today's tech giants wield and usher in a golden age of individual empowerment and entrepreneurial freedom.” It will disrupt concentrations of power in banks, companies and billionaires, and deliver better ways for creators to profit from their work.

Web3 Outspoken Pessimism

Critics of the Web3 movement argue that its technology is hard to use and prone to failure. “Neither venture capital investment nor easy access to risky, highly inflated assets predicts lasting success and impact for a particular company or technology” (Tim O’Reilly).

Other critics attack “the amount of utopian bullshit” and call it a “dangerous get-rich-quick scam” (Matt Stolle) or even “worse than a Ponzi scheme” (Robert McCauley). “At its core, Web3 is a vapid marketing campaign that attempts to reframe the public’s negative associations of crypto assets into a false narrative about disruption of legacy tech company hegemony” (Stephen Diehl). “But you can’t stop a gold rush,” wrote Moxie Marlinspike. Sounds familiar?

A “Big Bang of Decentralization” is NOT Coming

In his seminal “Protocols, Not Platforms,” Mike Masnick asserted that “if the token/cryptocurrency approach is shown to work as a method for supporting a successful protocol, it may even be more valuable to build these services as protocols, rather than as centralized, controlled platforms.” At the same time, he made it clear that even decentralized systems based on protocols will still likely end up with huge winners that control most of the market (like email and Google, for example. I recommend reading the whole piece if you haven’t already).

Currently, Web3 enthusiasts are hyping that a “Big Bang of decentralization” is coming. However, as the crypto market evolves, it is “becoming more centralized, with insiders retaining a greater share of the token” (Scott Galloway). As more people enter Web3, the more likely centralized services will become dominant. The power shift is already underway. See How OpenSea took over the NFT trade.

However, Mike Masnick also emphasized that decentralization keeps the large players in check. The distributed nature incentivizes the winners to act in the best interest of their users.

Are the new winners of Web3 going to act in their users’ best interests? If you watch Dan Olson’s “Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs” you will probably answer, “NO.”

From “Peak of Inflated Expectations” to “Trough of Disillusionment”

In Gartner’s Hype Cycle, it is expected that hyped technologies experience “correction” in the form of a crash: A “peak of inflated expectations” is followed by a “trough of disillusionment.” In this stage, the technology can still be promoted and developed, but at a slower pace. With regards to Web3, we might be reaching the apex of the "inflated expectations". Unfortunately, there will be a few big winners and a “long tail” of losers in the upcoming “disillusionment.”

Previous evolutions of the web had this "power law distribution". Blogs, for example, were marketed as a megaphone for anyone with a keyboard. It was amazing to have access to distribution and an audience. But when you have more blogs than stars in the sky, only a fraction of them can rise to power. Accordingly, only a few of Web3’s new empowering initiatives will ultimately succeed. Then, “on its way to the many,” the question remains “would the new wealth be diverted up to the few?” As per the history of the web, in a "winner-take-all" world, the next iteration wouldn't be different. 

From a “Bubble” to a “Balloon”

Going through the dot-com description, and then, the current Web3 debate - feels like déjà vu. Nonetheless, as I argue that the tech coverage should not be in either Techlash (“tech is a threat”) or Techlust (“tech is our savior”) but rather Tech Realism – I also argue the Web3 debate should be neither “bubble burst” nor “golden age,” but rather in the middle.

A useful description of this middle was recently offered by M.G. Siegler, who said the tech bubble is not a bubble but a balloon. Following his line of thought, instead of a bubble, Web3 can be viewed as a “deflating balloons ecosystem”: The overhyped parts of Web3 might burst, and affect the whole ecosystem, but most evaluations and promises will just return closer to earth.

That’s where they should be in the first place.

Dr. Nirit Weiss-Blatt is the author of The Techlash and Tech Crisis Communication

Filed Under: dot com, dot com bubble, techlash, web3

Cop Trainer Encouraging Cops To Run Facial Recognition Searches On People During Traffic Stops

from the never-mind-the-local-laws,-I-guess dept

Cops are out there giving each other bad advice. An instructor for Street Cop Training -- a New Jersey based provider of officer training programs -- is telling officers it's ok to run facial recognition searches during routine traffic stops, when not encouraging them to go further with their potential rights violations.

In a podcast recently uncovered by Caroline Haskins for Insider, Maryland detective Nick Jerman tells listeners there's nothing wrong with running a facial image against publicly available databases during a traffic stop.

In a July 2021 episode of the Street Cop Podcast with Dennis Benigno, the company's founder, Jerman encouraged using facial recognition software to determine the identity of the person pulled over. The Street Cop Podcast is advertised as "The training that cops deserve" and, along with Street Cop Training's other programs, is marketed to active-duty police.

"Let's say you're on a traffic stop and we have someone in the car that we suspect may be wanted," Benigno asked during the episode. "What do we do in that situation?"

"Well there's a couple of paid programs you can use where you can take their picture, and it'll put it in," Jerman said, referring to facial recognition tools, before recommending "another one called PimEyes you can use." PimEyes is a free, public-facing facial-recognition search engine.

The legality of running searches like this is still up in the air. If there's nothing beyond suspicion a vehicle occupant might be a wanted suspect, officers would likely have to develop something a little more reasonable before engaging in searches -- like utilizing a facial recognition program -- unrelated to the traffic stop. And in some states and cities, it is very definitely illegal, thanks to recent facial recognition tech bans. Just because the cops may not own the tech utilized during these searches doesn't necessarily make actions like these legal.

But that's not the only potential illegality Detective Jerman (who, as Haskins points out, is currently being investigated by his department over some very questionable social media posts) encourages. He notes that in many states officers cannot demand people they stop ID themselves, especially when they're just passengers in a vehicle. He recommends this bit of subterfuge to obtain this information without consent.

"How about, you're in a situation where you can't compel ID and before you even ask you're like there's something not right with this guy and he's gonna lie," Benigno said.

Jerman suggested getting the person's phone number, either by asking the person, or by accusing the person of stealing a phone in the car and asking if they can call the phone in order to exonerate them.

"[Say] 'I see that phone in the car, we've had a lot of thefts of phones,' say 'Is that really your phone?' and then you can call it to see if that's the real phone number," Jerman said. "If you can get the phone number from your target, the world is your oyster."

Once a cop has a phone number, they can use third-party services to discover the phone owner's name and may be able to find any social media accounts associated with that phone number. The request may sound innocuous -- seeking to see if a phone is stolen -- but the end result may be someone unwittingly sharing a great deal about themselves with an officer.

Detective Jerman also provides classes on how to create fake social media accounts using freely accessible tools. He does this despite knowing it's a terms of service violation and appears to believe that since there's no law against it, officers should avail themselves of this subterfuge option. He has also made social media posts mocking Facebook and others for telling cops they're breaking the platform's rules when they do this.

But far more worrisome is something he admitted on another Street Cop Training podcast:

He recounted that at a wedding a few years ago, his friend wanted to approach a woman in a red dress because he "thought she was pretty hot." Jerman said that on the spot, he did a geofence Instagram search for recent posts near the wedding venue. He found a picture with the woman in the red dress, named Marilisa, posted by her friend, Amanda.

"Then you can start gaining intel on Amanda, then you can go back to Marilisa and start talking to her as if you know her friend Amanda," Jerman said.

Even his host, Street Cop Training founder Dennis Bengino, seemed to consider Jerman's actions to be a little creepy. But that appears to be Detective Jerman's MO: the exploitation of any service or platform to obtain information on anyone he runs into, whether it's at a wedding or during a pretextual traffic stop.

Despite Jerman's insistence that none of this breaks any laws, the actual legality of these actions is still up in the air. The lack of courtroom precedent saying otherwise is not synonymous with "lawful." Cases involving tactics like these are bound to result in challenges of arrests or evidence, and it's not immediately clear running unjustified searches clears the (very low) bar for reasonableness during investigative stops.

However, Jerman's big mouth and enthusiasm for exploitation should make it clear what's at stake when cops start asking questions, no matter how innocuous the questions may initially appear. And documents like the one obtained by Insider -- one that lists dozens of publicly accessible search tools and facial recognition AI -- should serve as a warning to anyone stopped by police officers. Imagine the creepiest things a stalker might do to obtain information about you. Now, imagine all of that in the hands of someone with an incredible amount of power, easy access to weapons, and an insular shield on non-accountability surrounding them.

Filed Under: facial recognition, nick jerman, police, traffic stops

Daily Deal: The Complete 2022 Microsoft Office Master Class Bundle

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The Complete 2022 Microsoft Office Master Class Bundle has 14 courses to help you learn all you need to know about MS Office products to help boost your productivity. Courses cover SharePoint, Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, Teams, and more. The bundle is on sale for $75.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Penguin Random House Demands Removal Of Maus From Digital Library Because The Book Is Popular Again

from the wow dept

We've said it over and over again, if libraries did not exist today, there is no way publishers would allow them to come into existence. We know this, in part, because of their attempts to stop libraries from lending ebooks, and to price ebooks at ridiculous markups to discourage libraries, and their outright claims that libraries are unfair competition. And we won't even touch on their lawsuit over digital libraries.

Anyway, in other book news, you may have heard recently about how a Tennessee school board banned Art Spiegelman's classic graphic novel about the Holocaust, Maus, from being taught in an eighth-grade English class. Some people called this a ban, while others said the book is still available, so it's not a "ban." To me, I think school boards are not the teachers, and the teachers should be able to come up with their own curriculum, as they know best what will educate their students. Also, Maus is a fantastic book, and the claim that it was banned because of "rough, objectionable language" and nudity is utter nonsense.

Either way, Maus is now back atop various best seller lists, as the controversy has driven sales. Spiegelman is giving fun interviews again where he says things like "well, who's the snowflake now?" And we see op-eds about how the best way get kids not to read books... is to assign it in English class.

But, also, we have publishers getting into the banning business themselves... by trying to capitalize on the sudden new interest in Maus.

Penguin Random House doesn't want this new interest in Maus to lead to... people taking it out of the library rather than buying a copy. They're now abusing copyright law to demand the book be removed from the Internet Archive's lending library, and they flat out admit that they're doing so for their own bottom line:

A few days ago, Penguin Random House, the publisher of Maus, Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, demanded that the Internet Archive remove the book from our lending library. Why? Because, in their words, "consumer interest in 'Maus' has soared" as the result of a Tennessee school board's decision to ban teaching the book. By its own admission, to maximize profits, a Goliath of the publishing industry is forbidding our non-profit library from lending a banned book to our patrons: a real live digital book-burning.

This is just blatant greed laid bare. As the article notes, whatever problems US copyright law has, it has enshrined the concept of libraries, and the right to lend out books as a key element of the public interest. And the publishers -- such as giants like Penguin Random House -- would do anything possible to stamp that right out.

Filed Under: books, copyright, copyright abuse, ebooks, libraries, maus
Companies: internet archive, penguin random house

Unknown American VC Firm Apparently Looking To Acquire NSO Group, Limit It To Selling To Five Eyes Countries

from the which-would-be-a-huge-improvement dept

NSO Group -- the embattled, extremely controversial Israeli phone malware developer -- finally has some good news to report. It may have a white knight riding to its rescue -- a somewhat unknown American venture capital firm that could help it pay its bills and possibly even rehabilitate its image.

Integrity Partners, which according to its website deals with investments in the fields of mobility and digital infrastructure, is managed by partners Chris Gaertner, Elad Yoran, Pat Wilkinson and Thomas Morgan.

According to the document of intentions, they will establish a company called Integrity Labs that would acquire control of NSO. It would also stream $300 million to the firm, in order to rebuild the company.

It's not all good news, at least not at the outset. The VC firm had pledged to lobby the US government on NSO's behalf to get the recent blacklist lifted, which means NSO would once again be able to purchase US tech solely for the purpose of developing exploits to use against that tech. If Integrity Partners has any interest in remaining true to its name, it should probably backburner this effort until it has engaged in some reputation rehabilitation.

Fortunately, it appears the VC firm is also interested in getting NSO back on the right track. Following neverending reports of NSO exploits being used to target journalists, political opponents, ex-wives, dissidents, and religious leaders, the government of Israel drastically reduced the number of countries NSO could sell to.

Integrity Labs aims to limit that list even further.

Instead of the current 37 clients, the company will reduce its sales to only five clients: the Five Eyes Anglosphere intelligence alliance of New Zealand, the United States, Australia, Great Britain and Canada. The company would initially focus on defensive cyber products as part of its rebranding effort.

With these restrictions in place -- and the United States on the preferred customer list -- it should be pretty easy to get the blacklist lifted. It's not that none of these countries would ever abuse malware to engage in domestic surveillance, but it's a far better list of potential clients than the one NSO had compiled over the last several years, which included a number of known habitual human rights abusers.

But there are still reasons to be concerned. Much of what happens to NSO after this acquisition occurs will still be shrouded in secrecy. There may be a claimed focus on defensive tech, but offensive exploits have always been NSO's main money makers and it will be much more difficult to remain profitable without this revenue stream.

Then there's the chance NSO will enter into a partnership with a different company that may not have the same altruistic goals, which means the malware developer will be able to continue limping along as the poster child for irresponsible sales and marketing. And the market for powerful malware will continue to exist. It will just end up being handled by companies that have remained mostly off the world press radar.

Also, there's the fact that there's very little information about who "Integrity Partners" actually is. While the firm's website lists its partners -- all of whom mention their military experience -- there is no evidence of a portfolio, or any evidence of previous investments. While the firm is listed in Crunchbase (the main database tracking VCs and startups), it shows no investments, and only mentions a single fund the firm has raised... for $350,000. It seems unlikely that that's enough to buy NSO Group.

For now, NSO's financial well-being and reputation are in tatters. The company cannot meet its debt obligations without outside help and its ruinous months-long streak of negative press present challenges even a timely influx of cash may not be able to reverse. But if it can rebrand and retool to provide defensive tech to a very short list of customers it may be able to survive its precipitous plunge into the "Tech's Most Hated" pool.

Filed Under: five eyes, malware, pegasus, spyware, surveillance
Companies: integrity partners, nso group