Senators Introduce Anti-Aaron's Law To Increase Jail Terms For 'Unauthorized Access' To Computers

from the someone-buy-these-senators-a-clue dept

Yesterday, we wrote about an important new bill, Aaron's Law, from Senators Ron Wyden and Rand Paul and Rep. Zoe Lofgren. It's a fix to many of the problematic aspects of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). If you're unaware, the CFAA is supposed to be a law to be used against people doing malicious hacking, but the wording is so broad and problematic, it has been used against people for merely violating the terms of service on a website, or someone using a work computer for non-work-related items -- which could lead to excessively long jail terms. The reason Aaron's Law is named that is because of Aaron Swartz, the guy that Federal Prosecutors publicly announced was facing 30 years in jail under the CFAA because he downloaded too many academic journal articles from JSTOR -- despite the fact that he did so on the MIT campus where the campus had a site license that allowed anyone on their network to download all the JSTOR papers.

As we noted in our post, there are still some who are pushing in the other direction -- and they didn't waste much time. The very same day that Aaron's Law was introduced, Senators Mark Kirk and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a competing law that appears to be a "We Should Have Threatened Aaron With More Years In Jail" Act. Okay, technically it's called the Data Breach Notification and Punishing Cyber Criminals Act -- and as I type this, no one seems willing to release the text. Both Senators have press releases out about the bill, but neither link to it, and Congress's website has a placeholder saying that it hasn't received the actual text yet either. Hopefully that will change soon.*

It's bizarre that they're lumping together data breach notifications and CFAA expansion in a single bill. These are two separate issues. And yet, from the press release quotes and the few small articles about these bills, it appears that everyone's focusing on the data breach notification stuff (which has its own problems) and thus we should be worried that the CFAA expansion could get included as something of a "throw in." The quotes, however, on this part of the bill are ridiculous. Here's Senator Kirk's press release:

This bipartisan legislation increases the maximum allowable fines and imprisonment for many of the most common cyber-crimes, including identity theft and theft of personal information. Current law does not sufficiently punish cyber criminals, and incidences like these recent devastating breaches of confidential information must be punished more aggressively. By modernizing these punishments, as many prosecutors have requested, we will better align punishments to the degree of harm that these crimes may inflict on victims.

And Senator Gillibrand's:

The bill raises the maximum allowable fines and imprisonment for many of the statutes which cyber criminals are charged: identity theft, conspiracy to commit access device fraud, obtaining information from a protected computer without authorization and computer hacking with intent to defraud.

It's the whole "obtaining information from a protected computer without authorization" that is a serious concern here, as that's part of what's been widely abused. Both Kirk and Gillibrand use a lot of populist rhetoric about protecting people from all these scary data breaches out there, but it demonstrates a serious ignorance of how widely the CFAA (with insanely large existing punishments) has been used repeatedly for activities no one legitimately thinks of as malicious hacking. Furthermore, it suggests a pretty serious cluelessness about the incentives and motivations of those who commit many of those breaches. Increasing the number of years they could spend in time from crazily high to insanely high isn't going to change a damn thing. And if these two Senators can't understand that, they shouldn't be touching the CFAA at all.

* As an aside, it's plainly ridiculous for anyone to announce a new bill without releasing the actual text. Even more ridiculous: in searching for the text of the actual bill on both Senators websites, I note that the very first item highlighted on Senator Gillibrand's website is "Transparency" where it says "Senator Gillibrand believes that more openness and transparency in government leads to more accountability and better results." Well, you know what might helps with that transparency? If you actually release the text of the bills you're introducing when you introduce them so that people can take a look at them.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, cfaa, cfaa reform, hacking, kirsten gillibrand, mark kirk

Aaron's Law Reintroduced To Try To Reform Dangerous, Broken Anti-Hacking Law

from the can-we-get-this-one-done-already? dept

We've written in the past how Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Senator Ron Wyden had introduced "Aaron's Law" (named after Aaron Swartz) as a way to fix the very broken CFAA law, which was used to throw the book at Swartz for downloading too many JSTOR journal articles on MIT's campus (where anyone on the network is allowed to download whatever they want from JSTOR). Swartz later committed suicide, which many blame on the aggressive prosecution against him (I hesitate to join those who do so, as you never know all the factors that went into the decision). Still, the CFAA has long needed a massive overhaul, as the law is frequently abused by law enforcement to threaten massive penalties for rather routine activities on a computer network.

Lofgren and Wyden have now reintroduced Aaron's Law, and this time they've added Senator Rand Paul as a sponsor, which is interesting to see (especially as he courts the tech industry). They also have a nice group of co-sponsors, including Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner, Mike Doyle, Dan Lipinski, Jared Polis and Beto O'Rourke. Here are the three key things the new bill does, according to Lofgren:

• Establishing that breaches of terms of service, employment agreements, or contracts are not automatic violations of the CFAA. By using legislative language based closely on 9th and 4th Circuit Court opinions, the bill would instead define 'access without authorization' under the CFAA as gaining unauthorized access to information by circumventing technological or physical controls — such as password requirements, encryption or locked office doors. Hack attacks such as phishing, injection of malware or keystroke loggers, denial-of-service attacks, and viruses would continue to be fully prosecutable under the strong CFAA provisions this bill does not modify.
• Bringing balance back to the CFAA by eliminating a redundant provision that enables an individual to be punished multiple times through duplicate charges for the same violation. Eliminating the redundant provision streamlines the law, but would not create a gap in protection against hackers.
• Bringing greater proportionality to CFAA penalties. Currently, the CFAA's penalties are tiered, and prosecutors have wide discretion to ratchet up the severity of the penalties in several circumstances, leaving little room for non-felony charges under CFAA (i.e., charges with penalties carrying less than a year in prison). The bill ensures prosecutors cannot seek to inflate sentences by stacking multiple charges under the CFAA, including state law equivalents or non-criminal violations of the law.

Frankly, I'd like to see CFAA reform go even further, but this is a good (and necessary) start. If you agree, you should let your own elected officials know that this is a bill worth supporting. Unfortunately, the White House is pushing a terribly bad update to the CFAA that won't actually fix the problems with it and could make the bill even worse. The DOJ, for example, remains a big fan of the CFAA and would like to see it expanded so it can be used more widely. At the same time, some large tech companies, like Oracle, have worked hard to prevent any significant CFAA reform, because they want to be able to use the law themselves. In other words, meaningful CFAA reform, no matter how strongly needed, is nowhere near a sure thing.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, aaron's law, cfaa, cfaa reform, rand paul, ron wyden, zoe lofgren

Nominee For Attorney General Tap Dances Around Senator Franken's Question About Aaron Swartz

from the fix-the-cfaa dept

We've discussed for years how broken the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) is. The law, which was written many years ago, is problematically vague in certain areas, allowing prosecutors to claim that merely breaking a terms of service you didn't read is a form of felony hacking -- as they define it as "unauthorized access." While there have been many egregious CFAA cases, one of the most high-profile, of course, was that of activist Aaron Swartz, who was arrested for downloading too many research papers from JSTOR from the computer network on the MIT campus. The MIT campus network gave anyone -- even guests -- full access to the JSTOR archives if you were on the university network. Swartz took advantage of that to download many files -- leading to his arrest, and a whole bunch of charges against him. After the arrest, the DOJ proudly talked about how Swartz faced 35 years in prison. Of course, if you bring that up now, the DOJ and its defenders get angry, saying he never really would have faced that much time in prison -- even though the number comes from the DOJ's (since removed) press release.

Swartz, of course, tragically took his own life in the midst of this legal battle, after facing tremendous pressure from the DOJ to take a plea deal as a felon, even as Swartz was sure he had done nothing illegal or wrong. Since then, there have been a few attempts to update the CFAA to block this kind of abuse, but they have been blocked at every turn by a DOJ that actually wants to make the law even worse. This includes the White House's latest proposal for CFAA reform, which would actually make more things a felony under the CFAA, and could drastically increase sentencing for things that many of us don't think should be a crime at all -- such as tweeting out a list of worst passwords on the internet.

Outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder has done his best to ignore or downplay any suggestion that his Justice Department abused the CFAA in going after Swartz. And it looks like his likely replacement is trying to do the same.

Senator Al Franken questioned nominee Loretta Lynch about Swartz and the CFAA and got back a response that is basically her avoiding the question. She doesn't say anything about Swartz, but goes off on some FUD about the dangers of malicious hackers and how the DOJ needs the tools to fight spyware. She then claims that the newly proposed CFAA changes are okay because they only increase the possible maximum sentences, but not the minimums, leaving things up to the discretion of judges (and prosecutors):

Question 1. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) has received attention for its potentially harsh penalties. In 2013, I wrote a letter to the Department of Justice expressing my concern about the way in which Aaron Swartz was aggressively prosecuted under the CFAA, and associating myself with a similar letter by Senator Cornyn. The Department’s response was, in short, that the prosecution of Swartz was consistent with the Act. Since then we have heard many people – from all over the political spectrum – call for reform of the CFAA. Recently, the White House announced a proposal to amend the Act. Some have characterized the proposal as a step in the wrong direction, noting – for example – that it would increase certain sentences. What is your assessment of these criticisms, and what is your opinion of the proposal?

RESPONSE: I believe that the Department of Justice has a responsibility to protect Americans from invasions of their privacy and security by prosecuting and deterring computer crimes. Accordingly, we must ensure that the CFAA, like all of our tools, remains up-to-date and reflects the changes in the way that cybercrimes are committed, changes that have occurred in the decades since it was first enacted. For example, I understand that the Administration’s proposals include provisions designed to facilitate the prosecution of those who traffic in stolen American credit cards overseas, to enable the Department to dismantle botnets that victimize hundreds of thousands of computers at a time, and to deter the sale of criminal “spyware.”

With respect to the sentencing provisions contained in those proposals, I believe it is appropriate to ensure that, in the event a defendant is convicted of a hacking offense, the sentencing court has the authority to impose a sentence that fits the crime. For example, the enormous harm caused by the massive thefts of Americans’ personal financial data from retailers illustrates the need to ensure that the maximum sentences available are adequate to deter the worst offenders. As the level of harm caused by the worst cybercrimes increases, I support increasing the maximum penalties available to punish those crimes to a level commensurate with similar crimes, such as mail fraud or wire fraud.

It is also important to understand that these statutory maximum sentences do not control what sentence is appropriate for less significant offenses under the CFAA. In many criminal prosecutions, including prosecutions under the CFAA of all but the most serious offenses, the statutory maximum penalty has little or no impact on the sentencing of convicted defendants. Instead, in each case, prosecutors make individualized sentencing recommendations, and judges make individualized decisions, based on such factors as the facts of the case, the offender’s history, and the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.

Finally, I note that the Administration’s 2015 proposal does not include any new mandatory minimum sentences, and I support the decision not to seek any such new sentences in the CFAA at this time.

This, of course, misses the point. First, it assumes that longer sentences are somehow going to do anything to diminish the likelihood of malicious attacks. It won't. This is such a total braindead law enforcement view of things: that if only there were greater punishment it would scare the "bad people" out of doing what they're going to do. That's never really worked, and especially not in this area, where the law is being abused to go after people who don't think they're actually doing anything wrong.

Second, it just plays up the FUD that "bad stuff is happening" so "something must be done." But it ignores how vague the law is and how it's wide open to abuse. A good law enforcement official would ask for clearer laws that more narrowly target actual bad behavior, rather than celebrating a broad and vague law that can be, and is, widely abused just to rack up more DOJ headlines and "victories."

Filed Under: aaron swartz, al franken, attorney general, cfaa, doj, loretta lynch

Free Our Paywalled Court Documents: The Aaron Swartz Memorial PACER Cup Contest Announced

from the go-carl-go dept

Yesterday was the two year anniversary of Aaron Swartz's unfortunate suicide. Today, Carl Malamud, the leading champion of freeing up public documents and laws, has announced a National Day of PACER Protest, to be held on May 1st, with the "winner" (explained below) to get the Aaron Swartz Memorial PACER Cup. Malamud's discussion of this is pretty long, but well worth reading. If you don't recall, Malamud and Swartz have spoken out against PACER in the past many times (as have we). PACER, of course, is the horrific, antiquated paywall system by which the federal courts lock up tons of public documents and only make them available at 10 cents per page (with some exceptions). We rack up hefty PACER bills here at Techdirt all the time.

PACER, itself, is of dubious legality. The law that established PACER says that the fees collected can only be used for the system itself, yet the system is so profitable that the money flows back into other areas of the judicial system, and the Administrative Office of the US Courts doesn't want to give up on its cash cow. The system itself is painful to use -- slow with a horrible interface -- before we even get to the ridiculousness of 10 cents per page. A few years back, the courts tested letting certain libraries have free access to PACER, leading Aaron Swartz to stop by one of the libraries and set up a system to download a bunch of these documents. The Administrative Office called the FBI on him, though (of course) he hadn't actually broken any laws so he wasn't charged with anything. This also resulted in the "pilot program" being cut off and the libraries losing their free access.

Still the documents he did get out became the initial seed for the RECAP collection, available at the Internet Archive, which any PACER user can now add to using RECAP the law, a simple browser add-on that automatically uploads documents you view on PACER to the Internet Archive's collection.

Malamud describes a three-pronged strategy to knock down that PACER paywall, which he dubs the "red, white and blue" teams. The red team involves filing lawsuits challenging PACER's legality. The blue team, which Malamud will undertake himself, involves asking a bunch of courts for an exemption to PACER for some research that he's working on (and has been for some time, involving privacy issues related to PACER).

It's the white team approach that involves everyone else. One part of it is asking people to send notes to their local judges, just to inform them how totally screwed up PACER is (since many judges may not realize how much of a pain it is to the public). But the bigger part is that Malamud has proposed May 1st as a day when he wants lots and lots of people to use PACER accounts to download documents (and RECAP them). Here's where an important "caveat" in the $0.10 per page comes into play. If you rack up less than $15 of downloads in a quarter, PACER waives your fees. So Malamud is hoping that lots of people will sign up for PACER accounts and use May 1 to download cases right up to that line, so you won't have to pay.

On May 1, what if a lot of people all downloaded $15/worth of documents and perhaps even set a record day for amount of PACER usage?

Using your $15/quarter in “free” is an easy activity. You need to get a PACER account, then you need to get the RECAP extension for either Firefox or Chrome. Do this in the first quarter so you can casually and at your leisure make sure your setup is working. That way you know you’ll be set to go on May Day....

My hope is that groups will gather together and focus on a single district or circuit court. Law schools are a natural, it wouldn’t be hard to get a couple hundred law students at a school to all go after their local district. But, this doesn’t have to be limited to lawyers! For example, there’s a wonderful group called DC Legal Hackers which was started by Alan deLevie, Rebecca Wiliams, Jameson Dempsey, and other talented public-spirited people in Washington. Likewise, Chicago has an extremely active civic community and active groups such as the Smart Chicago Collaborative, founded by Daniel X. O’Neil. My hope is that some of these groups might get involved as well! (This memo is the first they will have heard of this, so I don't presume to task them with work, but only hope they will consider participation.)

In order to support the concepts of groups working together, I have made a small grant to the Free Law Project to add a simple “group name” field to your RECAP Extension preferences. They will furnish me a report on May Day showing each file and group name, so I can tally a total by district.

In other words, you can sign up for a "team" and Malamud will see which team helps free the most documents. And for the winner:

In order to stimulate a little friendly competition, we will monitor the RECAP logs on May 1 and for the group that uploads the most data for a single court we will award the Aaron Swartz Memorial PACER Cup, a handsome artifact suitable for display in your law school or civic venue trophy case. The next year, if PACER is still behind a paywall, we will rerun the competition and the new winner will get the cup. If and when the PACER paywall gets dropped, the last one holding the cup gets to keep it. We have commissioned Point.B Studio, who worked very closely with Aaron on projects for a decade, to design and implement the PACER Cup.

We strongly recommend taking part in this, though we also recommend that you sign up for PACER now, because it takes a bit of time. Make sure you have the hang of it now, in the first quarter (for less than $15 worth) before May 1st, so you're ready. Then get the RECAP extension for your preferred browser.

Oh, and feel free to put down "Techdirt" as your "group name" if you can't find a more worthy team to join...

Filed Under: aaron swartz, carl malamud, documents, downloads, pacer, paywall, public domain

White House Responds To Petition About Aaron Swartz By Saying Absolutely Nothing

from the that's-a-response? dept

Soon after the unfortunate suicide of Aaron Swartz, a lot of anger was directed at Carmen Ortiz, the US Attorney who was the key figure behind the ridiculous prosecution of Swartz for daring to download too many documents (that he had legal access to, as did anyone connecting to MIT's network). Ortiz showed no concern at all that either she or her office had done anything improper in threatening Swartz with over 30 years in jail for downloading (legally) some academic papers. As a result some people set up one of those "We the People" White House petitions, asking the Obama administration to remove Ortiz from her job.

This petition had no chance. Petitions are supposed to be used to get the White House to discuss or commit to policy positions. Specific personnel decisions seem way outside the scope. Besides, as bad a job as we may think Ortiz did in handling the Swartz situation, frankly, it's not the kind of thing the White House will ever come out and say directly. That's just not how it works.

Similarly, while at times the "We the People" petitions have been useful in forcing the White House's hand on things, for the most part, the administration seems to ignore most of them, even if they got the required 100,000 signatures demanding a response.

So I'm at a total loss as to why the White House suddenly decided -- two years later -- to respond to the petition to remove Ortiz from her job, and to basically say... absolutely nothing in response:

Aaron Swartz's death was a tragic, unthinkable loss for his family and friends. Our sympathy continues to go out to those who were closest to him, and to the many others whose lives he touched.

We also reaffirm our belief that a spirit of openness is what makes the Internet such a powerful engine for economic growth, technological innovation, and new ideas. That's why members of the Administration continue to engage with advocates to ensure the Internet remains a free and open platform as technology continues to disrupt industries and connect our communities in ways we can't yet imagine. We will continue this engagement as we tackle new questions on key issues such as citizen participation in democracy, open access to information, privacy, intellectual property, free speech, and security.

As to the specific personnel-related requests raised in your petitions, our response must be limited. Consistent with the terms we laid out when we began We the People, we will not address agency personnel matters in a petition response, because we do not believe this is the appropriate forum in which to do so.

If that's the answer, why bother responding at all? Even the opening statement expressing concern for Swartz's family and friends rings hollow. While I know, for a fact, that some in the White House absolutely do understand what Swartz meant to the internet, this response is incredibly weak. Of course, even though they couldn't do anything or say anything about Ortiz, an announcement like this (two years later) could have been tied to some sort of program on internet openness, or increasing access to public domain works, or any of a number of projects and campaigns that Swartz was close to. There was no real reason to pick up this thread now, but having decided to answer the petition now, the White House certainly could have done something a lot more productive with it.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, carmen ortiz, obama administration, petition, we the people, white house

Authors Guild Argues That Google Books Should Be Infringing Because Aaron Swartz

from the wait,-what?!? dept

The saga of the Authors Guild v. Google Books continues to make its way through the courts. This has been going on for years and years, and we don't need to rehash all of the background, other than a few of the more recent situations. Last year, the case went to the 2nd Circuit appeals court, supposedly to discuss the Authors Guild's desire to make its case into a class action lawsuit. However, the appeals court judges basically ignored that issue, and said it was meaningless since it seemed pretty clear that Google Books was fair use. Thus, it sent the case back to the lower court asking it to determine if Google Books is fair use. The argument is that, if it's fair use, whether or not it's a class action is moot. The lower court dutifully declared Google Books fair use a year ago.

Now the case is back before the appeals court as the Authors Guild is insisting loudly that it's not fair use. Thankfully, the judges appear to be very, very skeptical. Perhaps this isn't a surprise, since they were the ones who last year were so focused on the fair use point. It seems clear that Judge Pierre Leval -- known for his support of fair use -- wasn't very interested in the Authors Guild bringing up false arguments that because Google makes money, Google Books can't be fair use:

In his argument Wednesday, attorney Paul Smith quickly sought to differentiate the Guild’s case against Google from its unsuccessful HathiTrust case, citing Google’s commercial nature. But almost immediately, Judge Pierre Leval shut him down, telling Smith he would not succeed by arguing that Google’s commercial nature precluded fair use. Smith, however, pressed on, arguing that Google’s scanning deprived authors of a potential market to license books for search. Again, Leval pushed back, noting the transformative nature of the use is what mattered, not whether somebody might potentially pay to make that use.

Another summary, from Courthouse News, notes that Leval compared Google to the NY Times:

Leval warned that Smith "would lose" the case if his argument was premised on the fact that "Google, like The New York Times, is a profit-motivated enterprise."

It makes no difference that, unlike Google, the Times stands to gain "dwindling, small profits" as opposed to Google's billions, he added.

Leval also, thankfully, was pretty clear in rejecting the idea that just because publishers could find someone to license a work it means everything needs to be licensed:

Smith argued that Google's business model prevented authors from licensing their books to companies like Microsoft, which he said was creating a licensed database before Google Books arrived.

"The test is not how transformative is the use," Smith said. "The test is this the type of use that would be licensed."

Strongly disagreeing with that point, Leval said. "You'd always find someone who would be willing to pay [a licensing fee] to avoid a lawsuit."

However, the craziest argument of all came from the Authors Guild's lawyers in which they tried to point to Aaron Swartz as a reason why Google Books shouldn't be fair use. The argument here is a bit convoluted: Google points out that it only shows snippets, not large swaths of scanned text. The Authors Guild then counters that maybe, just maybe, some enterprising hacker might figure out how to break into the backend and release all the text... because Aaron Swartz:

Google Books avoids copyright violations by only allowing users to read portions of books that match their searches, but the Authors Guild raised the possibility of hacker disseminating the digitized books in full.

Waxman emphasized that this has never happened in the history of Google Books.

In rebuttal, Smith said that he mentioned this concern in light of "an MIT student" distributing academic articles from a university database because he believed, "Information should be free."

This is clearly a reference to Swartz, but it's wrong in all sorts of ways (including that Swartz was never an MIT student). Swartz also never "distributed" those academic articles. He merely downloaded them. It's unclear if he actually intended to distribute them or not. He also didn't hack the system. He had full access to the articles he was downloading. And he didn't do it because "information should be free." As we've noted, that phrase tends to be a bogus strawman that copyright system supporters toss up to mock anyone who is in favor of fixing copyright law's problems.

No matter what, it clearly has no relevance whatsoever to the case at hand and whether or not book scanning to create a searchable index is fair use. The Authors Guild has been flailing about wildly for a while, and dredging up Aaron Swartz just seems to show how ridiculously desperate it's become.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, book scanning, commercial use, copyright, fair use, google books, pierre leval, transformative use
Companies: authors guild, google

Film Distributor, Copyright Enforcement Company Join Forces To Kick Creative Commons-Licensed Film Off YouTube

from the would-rather-be-fast-than-be-correct dept

Infringement takedown notices: can't live with them, rights holders won't let your service live without them. YouTube once again is the flashpoint, with a Creative Commons-licensed film being taken down in response to a takedown notice. The Aaron Swartz documentary, "The Internet's Own Boy," was briefly knocked offline by a bogus copyright claim (that it was likely an error doesn't make it any less bogus) filed by Remove Your Media, LLC.

Brian Knappenberger, the director and producer of the film (which is also available through paid streaming services, along with other non-paid outlets like the Internet Archive), confirmed that no one on his side of the film had anything to do with it.

"It wasn't done by us," Knappenberger told the Daily Dot. "I'm trying to figure out [who issued the claim]."

The Daily Dot contacted Remove Your Media, which refused to offer any insight on this bogus copyright claim.

A representative for Remove Your Media, Eric Greene, refused to name the client who hired him for the takedown, though he noted it was "a distributor outside the U.S."

Greene then deployed the most unfortunate excuse anyone can offer post-World War II.

"We were just following orders," Greene said.

Apparently, the documentary's foreign distributor confused CC-licensing with regular old copyright, if it even bothered to check on the film's US distribution rights before it issued the notice. (The Internet Archive's upload is one of the few places foreign viewers won't run into a "Sorry, but this content is not available in your country" message.)

A representative for one of the film's U.S. distributors attributed the takedown to "miscommunication," and expressed confidence it would be resolved soon.

And, what do you know, it actually was. As of this point, the film has already been restored to its fully playable glory, something of an anomaly in an era when even clearly erroneous takedowns take hours or days to be reinstated -- if they ever are.

On one hand, with a platform of YouTube's size, mistakes are inevitable. On the other hand, if the DMCA provided for a notice-and-notice system, minor debacles like this could be easily averted. Instead, it's a notice-and-takedown system that makes it all too easy to pull the trigger and let those at the other end deal with the damage. Companies attempting to protect their content are all too willing to move quickly, rather than move carefully, resulting in a lot of collateral damage -- sometimes including to their own assets.

Fortunately, this was fixed quickly, and even if it wasn't, several viewing options remain. But this is yet another indication that the ease of YouTube's takedown system is only making things progressively worse, rather than reaching some sort of balance between YouTube users and rights holders.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, brian knappenberger, censorship, copyright, creative commons, dmca, internet's own boy, takedown
Companies: remove your media

When Aaron Swartz Spoofed His MAC Address, It Proved He Was A Criminal; When Apple Does It, It's Good For Everyone

from the only-the-second-one-is-true dept

Whenever we write about Aaron Swartz and the criminal prosecution against him, some of our (and Aaron's) critics scream that it was "obvious" that he knew he was up to no good, because he chose to spoof his MAC address on the machine he used to download JSTOR articles. Of course, as many people explained, spoofing a MAC address isn't some crazy nefarious thing to do, and often makes a lot of sense. In fact, Apple recently announced that iOS 8 will have randomized MAC addresses to better protect people's privacy. Simply speaking: Apple is making "MAC spoofing" standard. And, as the folks over at EFF are noting, this is a very good thing for your privacy.

As Cory Doctorow points out, this highlights the ridiculousness of MAC spoofing being used as evidence against Swartz, when now it's going to be a standard feature of iPhones and iPads (and, hopefully, other device makers will quickly follow suit).

This, of course, is one of the unfortunate results when you have law enforcement folks who simply don't understand much technology. People who actually understand both privacy and the ways you might approach problems you face on the internet, recognize that things like MAC spoofing are perfectly reasonable to do at times -- but such actions are twisted by law enforcement as being nefarious and dangerous because it makes it easier to "build a case" and because they don't understand how perfectly common such actions are.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, ios, mac address, privacy, spoofing

Don't Miss The Powerful Trailer For The Aaron Swartz Documentary: The Internet's Own Boy

from the wish-aaron-could-see-this dept

A year ago, we wrote about filmmaker Brian Knappenberger's efforts to put together a documentary about Aaron Swartz. It wasn't going to be a "memorial," but rather an "investigative documentary" into Swartz's story and the lawsuit against him. Earlier this year, a very rough cut of the film made it to Sundance, where it received a tremendous reaction. In January, Knappenberger also put together some clips for a short trailer including some of Swartz's comments about the NSA, to help highlight "The Day We Fight Back." Now the film is finally getting close to an actual release, and a very powerful trailer has been released. With so much going on in the world on a variety of issues that Aaron cared so deeply about, just this trailer should remind everyone how much the world has lost, and how much we're missing without Aaron around to help on these issues any more. Though, with that sadness, hopefully it also inspires more people to step up and help out -- whether it's copyright, corruption, surveillance, access to knowledge, net neutrality or anything else, the world needs the kind of help that Aaron provided for years. But now people have to figure out how to do it without him.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, brian knappenberger, documentary, internet's own boy

Describing Public Domain Works As 'Pirated' And 'Illegal' Is Bad For Everyone

from the stop-that dept

Yahoo Tech has an interesting column about an "art project" in Germany, where a bunch of folks are printing out 250,000 academic papers from JSTOR, which they're describing as the JSTOR Pirate Headquarters. Of course, as I'm sure you know, JSTOR -- the somewhat controversial organization that hosts thousands of academic articles behind a massively high paywall -- was a central player in the Aaron Swartz saga.

It was JSTOR's collection that Aaron was caught downloading, though it was never entirely clear what he was going to do with it. Soon after Aaron's arrest, a guy by the name of Greg Maxwell got some attention by releasing 33GB of JSTOR scientific papers to the Pirate Bay. While he'd considered doing so before, he had held off out of concern for how JSTOR might react. But the simple fact was that all of the papers he released were public domain papers, meaning that JSTOR would have no right to complain. In fact, a few months later, JSTOR itself agreed to make all its public domain materials free. JSTOR freely admits that Maxwell's decision influenced the move, but that they had been planning to do something like this anyway.

So, back to Germany and the "JSTOR Pirate Headquarters." As the Yahoo story notes, the folks there were inspired by the Swartz story to try to create some sort of civil disobedience act, with the initial plan being to print out the documents Swartz downloaded -- but, of course, that database has long since gone away. Instead, they found Maxwell's torrent, and decided to print that out. The problem is that throughout the story, everyone seems to pretend that this is some sort of illegal act of piracy. Beyond the fact that they call it the JSTOR Pirate Headquarters, the article by Rob Walker opens this way:

For several days now, five printers in Düsseldorf, Germany, have been pumping out illegally-downloaded articles from JSTOR, the digital library of academic journals.

Except they're not illegally downloaded. They're public domain, which makes them perfectly legal to download.

Then Walker claims:

If you’re in the area, you can stop by and browse this stuff – which would cost you something like $353,229 to buy from JSTOR itself.

Except that's not true either, because JSTOR made the same documents free.

And it appears the guy behind the project doesn't realize this either:

The JSTOR Pirate Headquarters, then, exists partly as a tribute to Swartz, and partly as a provocation, explains its overseer, the artist and poet Kenneth Goldsmith. The material being printed consists of “arcane scientific papers that are hundreds of years out of copyright,” he tells me via email. “Yet JSTOR is firewalling & profiting from this stuff, which should be available to everyone at no cost.”

Again, those works have already been freed, legally, both by Maxwell and by JSTOR. So while this protest may have some symbolic value, to claim that these works are locked up and that this is some sort of illegal activity is just wrong. Later in the article, they discuss the possibility that JSTOR might do something:

There has been, to date, no word from JSTOR. And realistically, this mass of paper is not a material threat to its business — even if it does make material an argument about the nature of that business.

“The legal issue is interesting. Is printing material without the intent to distribute it really illegal?” Goldsmith asks. “Is this useless intellectual property really worth going to the mat for?

Except, not only is this not a material threat to its business, it's not a threat to anything. These works are all completely legal, in the public domain and totally freely available from a variety of sources including JSTOR. Here, go ahead and check it out.

That's not to say there aren't other issues with JSTOR. Its regular paywall is ridiculously high, and often stands in the way of sharing important academic knowledge (frequently paid for by the public). And there are plenty of non-public domain works JSTOR should consider freeing up as well -- such as this 80 year old article on why we should do away with copyright and patent laws altogether. It's 21 pages and JSTOR wants $43 for it, which seems rather ironic, since the author himself, Arnold Plant, believes that locking up such works with intellectual property is a mistake.

So, I can recognize the desire to do something that appears to be civil disobedience to stand up against JSTOR. But the JSTOR Pirate Headquarters, unfortunately, only contributes misinformation to the situation, implying that freely available public domain works are somehow illegal or subversive. It appears this is the opposite of the message they want to send, so it's unfortunate that the message that is getting out is that it's illegal to share public domain works. Similarly, shame on Yahoo Tech and its reporter, who should be willing to do the most basic of fact checking to understand the very premise of the article is hogwash. Yahoo Tech is trying to position itself as a tech publication for a more mainstream audience, and if it believes the way to do that is to spread misinformation, that's unfortunate.

Filed Under: aaron swartz, copyright, germany, greg maxwell, public domain
Companies: jstor