Add Argentina To The List Of Countries Looking To Censor The Internet (For The Children, Of Course)

from the growing-list dept

We've noted that both Russia and China recently pushed for even more internet censorship, and both did so while claiming that it was really to "protect the children." Of course, lots of other countries are following suit. For example, Argentina is now considering a bill that appears to created a blacklist of websites that ISPs must block. Once again, this is done "for the children," as the list is supposed to include sites dealing with child porn. The problem, of course, is that such lists rarely seem to stick to just child porn -- and with little oversight, the over-blocking and over-filtering of legitimate content becomes way too easy. In the meantime, we're still at a loss as to how censorship is a better solution than actually going after those responsible if they're posting illegal content.

Filed Under: argentina, censorship, for the children, free speech

Argentina Building Huge Biometric Database For Use With Police's Face Recognition Technology

from the you-can-run-but-you-can't-hide dept

One of the more unfortunate consequences of Moore's Law is that technologies that erode privacy are becoming cheaper every year – and hence more attractive to governments eager to spy on their own populace. The latest to heed the siren call of mass surveillance is Argentina.

At the end of last year, the Argentinian President ordered the creation of a new, centralized, nationwide biometric ID database for law enforcement purposes, known as SIBIOS. A decree from the beginning of this year allows 14 million digitized fingerprints, gathered as part of Argentina's national ID system, to be added to SIBIOS. It's actually even worse than that, as this post from the EFF about the scope of the police database explains:

the SIBIOS will be fully "integrated" with existing ID card databases, which, aside from biometric identifiers, include an individuals’ digital image, civil status, blood type, and key background information collected since her birth and across the various life stages.

Add in the fact that the Argentinian police force already has face recognition technology that it is being encouraged to use to link unidentified faces obtained through surveillance cameras with identified images from the SIBIOS system, and the results are potentially disturbing:

Given the prevalence of street cameras and how easy it has become to identify one unnamed face amidst thousands, individuals who care about their privacy and anonymity will have a very difficult time protecting their identity from biometrics databases in the imminent future. There are extreme unforeseen risks in a world where an individual’s photo, taken from a street camera or a social network, can be linked to their national ID card.

That's worrying given Argentina's political history, as the activist Beatriz Busaniche of Fundacion Via Libre points out in the EFF piece:

Privacy is particularly crucial for our country since throughout our long history of social and political movements, calls for action have often taken to the streets. It is of higher importance for activists to remain anonymous in their demonstrations, especially when they are at odds with the government itself. In this way, SIBIOS not only challenges their privacy and data protection rights, but also poses serious threats to their civil and political rights.

Nor is that concern purely an Argentinian issue. In a world where Occupy movements are increasingly taking to the streets, the use of the latest technology to identify protesters automatically, and to link them to detailed files held on government databases, is likely to affect ever-more people around the globe.

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Filed Under: argentina, biometric database, privacy

Argentine ISPs Block Over A Million Blogs In Response To Court Order To Block Two

from the internet-censorship-at-work dept

And people wonder why we worry about plans to censor websites. Every time it happens, the censorship ends up being much broader than planned. The latest example comes from Argentina, where a court order to block two specific sites -- leakymails.com and leakymails.blogspot.com -- actually resulted in over a million blogs being blocked. That's because some ISPs, in order to cut off the blogspot site, simply blocked the IP address 216.239.32.2, which is used across Blogger's blogspot offering. As the EFF notes:

IP blocking is a blunt method of filtering content that can erase from view large swaths of innocuous sites by virtue of the fact that they are hosted on the same IP address as the site that was intended to be censored. One such example of overblocking by IP address can be found in India, where the IP blocking of a Hindu Unity website (blocked by an order from Mumbai police) resulted in the blocking of several other, unrelated sites.

Filed Under: argentina, blocks, censorship, filters, ip addresses

Summit Entertainment Commences Criminal Legal Action Against Twilight Fan Who Shared Images From Movie

from the photos! dept

We were somewhat stunned a few months back when notoriously overly-litigious movie studio Summit Entertainment absolutely freaked out and went legal against some fans of the Twilight movies by filing John Doe lawsuits against people for tweeting some photos from the next film in the saga. Remember: these are photos. And the reason they're getting passed around is because these people are fans. Nothing in these photos takes away from the marketability of the movie itself. If anything they do the exact opposite.

Summit Entertainment simply doesn't know when to give up. It apparently went out and spent money to hire Kroll Inc., a famed corporate investigations company who is not cheap, to track someone down to Argentina, and discover that they had shared the images... and then commenced legal action against the person in both the US and Argentina, including criminal charges in Argentina (thanks to DandonTRJ for sending this in).

Remember, this is a fan who was sharing photos of a film that would only serve to get people more interested in the film. Step on up, Summit Entertainment, because you just won the award for the absolute worst entity at treating fans right.

Filed Under: argentina, copyright, lawsuits, photos, twilight
Companies: summit entertainment

Argentina Orders Google To Censor Suggested Searches

from the it's-algorithmic... dept

While Google won a similar lawsuit in France, down in Argentina, a court has ordered Google to censor the "suggested search" feature on searches that lead to certain sites that have been deemed offensive. It has also ordered Google to remove those sites from its index. Honestly, if it was going to order Google to remove the sites from the index anyway, I wonder why the suggested search was even an issue. Once they're out of the index, the suggested search issue becomes meaningless.

Either way, this definitely seems to be a growing global trend of placing the liability and blame for content that people don't like on the intermediaries. Even if we can all agree that the content is offensive and ignorant (and, hopefully, we can), is this really the most sensible response? Personally, I've always found that attempts to censor such content only empower those who already believe in it, because they feel like they're revealing such an important "secret," since others feel the need to shut it down. I tend to think that the best way to respond to bad or offensive speech is with more speech, in order to educate the ignorant.

Either way, putting the responsibility on Google seems silly. Google is just indexing the content. It's not responsible for it. When we seek to put censorship ability on the intermediaries, it feels like we're not dealing with the actual issues. Rather than responding to ignorant speech with more speech, it's trying (and almost certainly failing) to sweep the ignorant and offensive speech under the rug. I greatly prefer a world in which we deal with realities (such as the fact that there are ignorant people out there), rather than hiding them and pretending such people don't exist.

Filed Under: argentina, censorship, free speech, google suggest
Companies: google

Argentinian Appeals Court Realizes It's Ridiculous To Blame Google/Yahoo For Search Results People Don't Like

from the welcome-to-the-interwebz dept

Last year, we wrote about a court ruling in Argentina that found Google and Yahoo liable for defamation claims, after a celebrity was upset that searches on her name had results that pointed to pornographic websites. There had actually been a similar decision in Argentina the year before as well. It seems silly to blame search engines if people don't like the search results on their name, but that's what happened. Thankfully, however, in an appeal to the first case we linked to above, involving Virginia Da Cunha, the court found that the sites could only be held liable if they were made aware of the "illegal content," and then failed to remove it. In other words, the court is effectively using a notice-and-takedown safeharbor setup. There are still problems with that, but it's a hell of a lot better than automatically fining Google and Yahoo even if those companies had no idea about the fact someone was upset with the search results. Still, it's not great. As another article notes, without an official safe harbor, the only effective way to win cases like this is to have the money to go to court. Even Google and Yahoo are still fighting a bunch of similar lawsuits and will have to keep going through the process, until there's a real safe harbor in place.

Filed Under: argentina, defamation, liability
Companies: google, yahoo

European Top Court Tells Monsanto It Can't Abuse Patent Law To Stop Import Of Argentinian Soymeal

from the live-by-the-patent... dept

Seed giant Monsanto is a case study in how abusing patent laws can create serious anti-competitive results. Monsanto, of course, patented various genetically modified seeds, and then aggressively used patent laws around the world to make it so that it was effectively impossible to do much without having to pay Monsanto. The US Supreme Court made things even worse a few years back by saying that Monsanto's patents were infringed upon when farmers hung onto seeds from this year's crop to plant next year (a very common practice in farming). Last week, the US Supreme Court again helped out Monsanto by ruling (mostly) in its favor in another case concerning Monsanto seeds.

However, the company is starting to see a lot more problems with its aggressive stance around the world. This week, the European Court of Justice smacked down Monsanto over its attempt to bar the import of Argentinian soymeal. Apparently Monsanto had failed to get a patent on its famous Roundup Ready soybeans in Argentina (which now dominate the market), and dealt with it by blocking the import of such soybeans to other countries. Argentinian producers figured that if they couldn't sell soybeans directly, they could process it into soymeal and sell that. Monsanto claimed that because the soymeal came from soybeans that would be patented in Europe, the soymeal was also infringing. The court disagreed.

That the court disagreed wasn't a huge surprise. The court had more or less made that clear a few months ago. Because of that, Monsanto tried to duck an important ruling against it by settling the dispute and withdrawing the original patent complaint. The European Court seemed to decide it wasn't going to let Monsanto off that easily. Even with the complaint withdrawn, the Court still went ahead with the judgment, making the point clear.

Separately, some governments are now kicking off investigations into Monsanto's advertising statements about the very same Roundup Ready soybeans. Combine all of that and Monsanto also reported dreadful earnings, with a 45% profit drop.

Once again, we're seeing what happens when you live off of artificial monopolies. They can make you rich in the short term, but they're no trick to building sustainable businesses. What the government gives in the form of monopoly rights, it can also take away.

Filed Under: argentina, europe, patents, seeds, soy beans, soymeal
Companies: monsanto

Argentinian Politician's Proposal For New Anti-Plagiarism Law Plagiarizes Wikipedia

from the where's-the-anti-irony-law dept

Britxardo alerts us to an amazingly ironic story coming out of Argentina. It seems that an elected politician there, Gerónimo Vargas Aignasse, has introduced some new legislation against plagiarism (Google translation of the original). It seems odd enough that he would be outlawing plagiarism (here in the US plagiarism is socially shunned, and could cost you your job, but isn't against the law unless it also reaches the point of copyright infringement, which is different), and it's made even worse by the fact that it looks like he's confusing plagiarism with copyright infringement -- noting in the explanation of the bill that "plagiarism" is harming the recording industry.

But that's not the ironic part.

As unbelievable as it may seem, it appears that the text Vargas Aignasse used to explain the bill was plagiarized straight from Wikipedia (Google translation of the original). Seriously. And not just a little bit. The first three paragraphs of the Spanish Wikipedia page on plagiarism are identical to three paragraphs in the explanation of the bill.

Just to make sure someone didn't do the opposite and take the text of the introduction and make it the Wikipedia page, I looked, and as I'm typing this, the Wikipedia page hasn't been updated since April -- and it looks like the bulk of that page has actually been in place for quite some time. The bill was introduced on May 6th.

It's difficult to think of anything more ironic than introducing a bill that calls for "imprisonment from three to eight years" for plagiarism... that plagiarizes the explanation for that bill. It's out and out plagiarism too. The three paragraphs look to be copied completely, and no effort is made to identify the source. It's also a bit weird that the text from Wikipedia -- which is basically just a definition of plagiarism -- is being used as the explanation of the bill. Nowhere does it describe why it's a problem or why it requires stringent jailtime. But, perhaps that's something Vargas Aignasse can ponder while serving three to eight years in prison for violating the law he just introduced... with the law he just introduced.

Filed Under: argentina, geronimo vargas aignasse, plagiarism, wikipedia

Facebook Ordered To Stop Helping Kids Skip Class In Argentina

from the logic-failure dept

When I was in high school, it was customary every year or so for there to be some sort of injustice that the students were upset about concerning the administration of the school. If it escalated enough, the kids would decide to stage some sort of protest -- which at least once involved skipping out on school for the day. Obviously, often enough, such efforts are really just a way for kids to have an excuse to skip out on classes for a day, but this sort of thing seemed pretty common even back when I was in high school. However, now, with things like Facebook... suddenly it's Facebook's fault that the same thing is happening?

Reader Osno alerts us to the news of a legal battle down in Argentina where a judge has ordered Facebook to block any group advocating student protests that involved skipping classes (that link is a Google translation of the original article).

Apparently, the back story, is that a large group of students in Mendoza, Argentina had organized a day to skip out on school via Facebook. The media in Argentina played up the story, and it resulted in other students around the country planning similar "skip school" days. Rather than recognize that this is what kids do, the whole thing has gone to court, with a judge claiming that this is somehow Facebook's fault, and it must start blocking any such groups. According to the translation:

"We did a little research on the basis of the allegations and found that the company was in breach of certain laws, as is of danger to health or integrity of its users...."

That seems like a pretty severe twisting of laws concerning requirements to protect the health of users. According to Osno, politicians are backing the judge, warning of what other groups Facebook might be used to create next -- such as the "great smokeout to smoke dope." Apparently, these folks are unaware that the same thing has happened for ages, using pretty much any communication method available -- whether it was email, telephone, paper or (*gasp*) talking in person. Blaming the communications medium isn't going to change any of that.

Filed Under: argentina, communications, skipping class, social networks, students
Companies: facebook

And Here We Go Again: Argentina Extends Copyright

from the cry-for-creativity,-Argentina dept

It's nearly impossible to keep track of the recording industry's efforts to extend copyright around the globe, using its usual "leapfrog" means of claiming that copyright lengths need to be "harmonized," and thus ratcheted up and up and up on a rotating basis. Apparently, while everyone was focused on places like Europe and Japan, the industry has successfully been able to get Argentina to extend the length of copyright on performances from 50 years to 70 years. Amusingly, all those quoted in favor of it, make bizarre claims that retroactively extending copyrights on content already created 50 years ago will somehow promote the creation of new music.

And, of course, as this news comes out, it's worth pointing out that a commenter last week reminded us of economist Rufus Pollock's paper from June of this year, which tried to calculate the optimal length of copyright and found that it is likely in the 10 to 15 year range. So why are governments moving progressively further away from that rate based on nothing other than demands from the record labels who know that lengthier copyrights are nothing more than a monopoly rent for them? What's truly amazing is that pretty much the entire history of the copyright debate has been based on claims without any evidence that "more" must be "better." But these days, we have plenty of evidence that shows that's not true. So why do politicians keep extending copyright?

Filed Under: argentina, copyright, copyright extension