White House Goes Too Far In Asking Google To Pull Controversial Video

from the there's-this-first-amendment-thing dept

Last week, we reported on Google's decision to block access in Egypt and Libya to the controversial, hate-mongering video that's been cited as leading to the violent reactions in the Middle East. We wondered if this was the right move, noting the seriousness of the violence and the ridiculousness of the video. However, Paul Levy's thoughts on this make sense. While we may worry about what line Google may draw, it is a private company and it's not doing this due to government pressure, but as part of it's own decision:

Its removal is not the same as deferring to government censorship, and as much as I hate to give mob violence the satisfaction of an effective heckler’s veto, we cannot expect that online service providers will never remove material simply because it is deemed offensive by wide swaths of the population. Moreover, I can’t help but wondering if the violent response isn’t just what the film-makers were hoping for. So by leaving the image on its site so that we can understand the controversy, while taking it down where broad access to the material is likely to cause the greatest harm, Google has made a comprehensible judgment.

As such, even if we disagree with the choice, it's a defensible choice.

However, things may have crossed the line late last week. There were reports that the White House strongly suggested that YouTube pull the video entirely. Of course, they didn't come out and say that exactly, but rather suggested that YouTube "review the video to see if it was in compliance with their terms of use."

But when it's the White House suggesting that, it's a pretty clear situation in which the President is applying pressure on a private company to censor speech. Of course, we've seen this before, though not with the White House directly. Four years ago, we saw Senator Joe Lieberman similarly pressure YouTube to start blocking "terrorist" videos on YouTube. Lieberman, of course, loves to pressure private companies into blocking speech. He did similar things to try to censor Wikileaks and even pushed some bad legislation to try to increase censorship powers of the federal government.

Either way, the White House putting pressure on Google has troubling implications, even if we agree that the video in question is a hate-mongering disgrace. As various free speech activists told Politico (link above) there are some troubling implications here:

"There's no indication that the government is questioning the right of these idiots to make that repellent film. On the other hand, it does make us nervous when the government throws its weight behind any requests for censorship," the American Civil Liberties Union's Ben Wizner said in an interview Friday.

"I am actually kind of distressed by this," said Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Even though there are all these great quotes from inside the White House saying they support free speech....by calling YouTube from the White House, they were sending a message no matter how much they say we don't want them to take it down, when the White House calls and asks you to review it, it sends a message and has a certain chilling effect."

Google, for its part, has actually stood up to the White House on this one, and said that it won't pull the clip, though it had begun blocking the video in India and Indonesia, where they determined the video itself was illegal, and the company needed to comply with local laws.

Of course, all of this is unlikely to have much, if any, impact on the violence and anger. And that's part of the problem and the ridiculousness with arguing for censorship. It seems quite likely that a very large percentage of those involved in the mob violence to this haven't even seen the video themselves. Caving in to censorship "hints" from government doesn't actually hide the content or calm much anger. In fact, it's likely to just draw more attention to it. The video is despicable and the reaction to it is horrifying on a number of levels. The loss of life is massively upsetting, especially over something so stupid. So I can certainly understand the instinct to try to "do something," and to reach for the easiest target: censoring the video. But not only would it be completely ineffectual, it opens up a whole host of other problems. Dealing with hate speech by seeking to censor it almost always just encourages more hate speech (and even more idiotic violent reactions). It may be an "easy" thing to do, but it's no solution to deep-seeded problems. It just creates new problems.

Filed Under: censorship, free speech, pressure, video, white house, youtube
Companies: google

UK Government Pressuring Search Engines To Censor Results In Favor Of Copyright Industries

from the backroom-deals dept

One of the most insidious aspects of recent Internet policy-making is that much of it is taking place behind closed doors, with little or no consultation -- think of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and TPP. But there's another dangerous trend: the rise of "informal" agreements between the copyright industries and Internet service providers.

With the implicit threat that tough legislation will be brought in if voluntary agreements aren't drawn up promptly enough, governments are using this technique to avoid even the minimal scrutiny that consultations on proposed new laws would permit. This allows all kinds of bad ideas to be forced through without any evidence that they will help and without the chance for those affected to present their viewpoints.

James Firth has a disturbing post about a proposed "voluntary" scheme involving search engines in the UK:

We know laws such as the UK's Digital Economy Act and America's SOPA/PIPA met incredible resistance from the tech industry and internet users, and readers of this blog and Open Rights Group supporters are already aware the UK government has switched tack from legislating to encouraging agreements directly between service providers and copyright owners.

What we didn't know until now is the extent that the UK government and in particular Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and the Creative Industries, is pressurising search engines to police search results in a way that goes well beyond notice and take-down.

I'm told a consortium of search engines at a meeting on Tuesday were accused of a "retrograde step" after failing to make progress on a proposal by music rights holders for a system to promote "good" music resellers and demote "bad" in the search rankings.

What is being proposed is out-and-out censorship and doctoring of search engine results through the use of blacklists and whitelists:

The blacklist is of websites accused of infringement. These sites will never appear in search results. That's the whole site, not just the pages from the site with infringing content. And this is not a court process, it's a notification system allowing studios to tell search engines directly who the bad guys are.

A white-list of "approved" online music and film services will be artificially promoted for music/film oriented searches.

That is, absolute power over search engines' results in these areas would be handed to industries that hardly have a good track record for adopting a proportionate approach to tackling unauthorized downloads. In particular, they are unlikely to lose much sleep over all the legitimate content that will become invisible when sites of borderline legality are removed from search engines' results "just to be on the safe side." And there are no indications that there would be any oversight as to who goes on the lists, or any right of appeal -- making it a purely extra-judicial punishment.

The good news is that the search engines seem to be resisting this move -- for the moment. As Firth writes:

I'm told that whilst search engine providers are both keen to strictly abide by all national laws and also willing to work with content owners to provide easy-to-use notice and take-down systems (under the EU E-Commerce Directive and US DMCA), they are "drawing the line" at doctoring search results to suit one relatively small group of economic interests.

The whitelist is anyway problematic, since it might be seen as collusion in anti-competitive behavior, and incur the wrath of the European Commission. Worryingly, one other suggestion from the copyright industries seems to be more acceptable: cutting off the funding of sites in the same way that SOPA proposed.

On funding a meeting was held last Wednesday at the Department for Media, Culture and Sport between rights holders, and advertisers and payment service providers.

I'm told in that meeting a broad consensus was reached to create a blacklist of websites where no advertiser would be allowed to advertise or face expulsion from industry bodies such as the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

But even that seems an extremely dangerous step to take because it raises important questions about who will draw up such a blacklist, on what criteria, and how will those placed on it be able to appeal.

That exposes one of the key problems with these "voluntary" agreements: those pushing for them have no interest in striking a balance, or in building in safeguards for those most affected -- it's all about getting a quick-and-dirty fix and to hell with the consequences. That's why legislation, with full consultation from all parties, is a far better way of proceeding. After all, it's why we have a legislative process with checks and balances in the first place -- to craft a solution that is both workable and fair. The new fashion for backroom agreements among a small group of unelected insiders is nothing less than an attack on that process, and hence on democracy itself.

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Filed Under: censorship, copyright, filtering, pressure, search results, uk
Companies: google, mpaa, riaa

Estonia Next In Line To Receive US 'Encouragement' To Adopt Harsher Anti-Piracy Laws

from the nice-little-country-you've-got-here dept

Numerous Wikileaks cables have highlighted the pressure that the US has brought to bear on several foreign governments behind closed doors in an attempt to get the latter to pass maximalist copyright laws. But it's worth noting that plenty of arm twisting takes place openly. Here, for example, is a letter (pdf) from the American Chamber of Commerce in Estonia addressed to the Minister of Justice, and the Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications of that country:

We find that the level of intellectual property protection in Estonia needs to be improved, both on the legislative and practical fronts. Estonian government should also focus more on investigating the commercial IPR infringements committed through the Internet, and not only breaches of law in relation with cyber terrorism. In addition, the government must follow the EU and national level debates that might have an impact on IPR legislative framework.

In other words, Estonia really ought fall into line like the other countries. Because if it doesn't:

Insufficient IPR protection has a negative effect on the entire economic situation in Estonia. As long as the IPR holders cannot be sure that their rights are protected, the international groups are hesitant in having their R&D units in Estonia and it is likely that R&D projects are run in countries with more comprehensive IPR protection. Insufficient IPR protection can also be an obstacle for starting new production units in Estonia as the IPR holders feel that the risk of IPR infringement is too high in Estonia and therefore it is better to produce their products in countries where the IPR-s are better protected.

Although the letter touches on trademarks and other areas, its central concern is copyright infringement, especially on the Internet. Its list of demands -- sorry, suggestions -- is depressingly familiar: stronger protection; more criminal prosecutions; intermediary liability for ISPs and website owners; and an "effective mechanism of damage compensation, without having to go through lengthy, complicated or costly procedures for achieving redress through the courts."

However, as an excellent post on the Estonian Public Broadcasting site explains, the letter's underlying assumptions about lack of enforcement are simply wrong:

They claim, for instance, that there is poor intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement in Estonia. However, Estonia’s IPR laws and enforcement, at least in the commercial space, are quite adequate. Operations, including websites, that exist for commercial exploitation of unlicensed rights, are already illegal and get shut down. The operators can be imprisoned for up to three years.

The article goes on to point out one of the likely casualties of any harsher approach to copyright enforcement in Estonia:

if suing for non-commercial infringement is allowed, sooner or later, the pubs, restaurants and hotels offering free WiFi will be receiving legal threats and fines because someone downloaded something via their connection. It will be simpler for businesses to close their free internet access points, rather than face the legal harassment and risk of huge crippling fines that could result from one of their clients downloading something illegally.

When that happens, the Open Internet, an item of national pride in Estonia, will effectively be dead.

That's an important point: copyright legislation does not exist in isolation, but can have serious knock-on effects on the digital life of a country -- in this case, jeopardizing Estonia's place in the vanguard of open wireless Internet coverage. Let's hope the Estonian ministers bear that in mind when their visitors from the US Embassy come calling.

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Filed Under: copyright, diplomacy, estonia, pressure, us

Visa & MasterCard: KKK Is A-OK, But Wikileaks Is Wicked

from the starvation-through-political-pressure dept

Well, it looks like we can add Visa to the list of companies pressured into no longer working with Wikileaks, following a similar move by MasterCard. At least, unlike MasterCard, Visa isn't already claiming that Wikileaks was convicted of a crime. Instead, it's just said that it's suspended any work with Wikileaks "pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules."

As Charles Arthur points out, the Ku Klux Klan's website points you to a site that takes both MasterCard and Visa -- suggesting the pure arbitrariness of both credit card companies' decision here. It's a bad idea when firms start making decisions for political reasons. There are all sorts of companies out there that take credit cards to support objectionable (to many) activities. Is it really the credit card companies' job to pick and choose who they find objectionable to work with -- and if so, what basis does it use for saying "KKK is okay, but Wikileaks is not"?

This reinforces the point we recently made about the role of corporate intermediaries in being able to aid governments in censorship, even in the absence of a trial or conviction. Either way, this is a really sad statement about both Visa and MasterCard and their willingness to cave to government pressure.

Filed Under: censorship, kkk, politics, pressure, wikileaks
Companies: kkk, mastercard, visa, wikileaks

Wikileaks Says US Pressure Resulted In Donation Account Being Shut Down

from the financial-censorship dept

While it's sometimes difficult to take the claims of persecution from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange seriously, it is interesting to see that Wikileak's donation account with Moneybookers has been shut down, and the company itself told Assange that it was due to the site being added to a US watchlist and an Australian blacklist. It's unclear what "watchlist" the US has for websites, but if this is accurate, it seems like another unfortunate example of US gov't censorship, this time through blocking financial resources.

Filed Under: blacklists, censorship, donations, pressure, wikileaks

Reuters Blogger Questions Reuters Editorial Actions: Transparency In Action

from the does-this-make-reuters-more-trustworthy-or-less? dept

Well, here's an interesting one. There were reports last week claiming that Reuters had spiked a story about hedge fund big shot Steven Cohen after Cohen complained to Reuters management. While Reuters has since strongly denied the charge, it is interesting to note (as sent in by reader JJ) that at least one Reuters blogger complained quite vocally about this decision. The full blog post, written on Reuter's Hedge World blog is well worth reading. Here's a brief snippet:

As a news organization, all we have connecting us to our audience is our credibility. When we make mistakes, when we miss the point, when we fail to publish in a timely manner--each of these creates a little crack in that credibility. Once enough cracks form over time, the credibility is eroded and ultimately broken apart. At that point it doesn't matter how many orange dots you have swirling around your TV commercial or how intelligent you claim your information is. Once that bond is broken you're screwed.

Because Reuters is my company, there's a big part of me that hopes this incident has been blown out of proportion; that the blogs don't have the whole story. I fear that's not the case, however. The way it looks now is positively scandalous. And as a journalist it makes me almost physically ill to think about it.

I hope someone above me addresses the situation publicly, because lord knows not addressing it ain't working. Right now this incident is relatively contained (although it was the most viewed post on ZeroHedge as of Tuesday). But by next week, this will be all over the place--Romanesko, Drudge. From there it could get real ugly real fast.

And herein, I hope, lies a lesson for whomever killed Matt Goldstein's Steve Cohen story: When you make a decision like that, under those circumstances, the back story will get out. And the fallout from that back story will always, always be worse than the fallout from the story itself.

What strikes me as most interesting about this is that this Reuters post is still up. Reuters did not pull it. It does have an update link at the top to another blog that posted Reuters' denial (not even a Reuters page... which is also noteworthy). While I'm still curious about the decision to spike the story, I have to admit that the fact that a Reuters blogger was allowed to post this blog seriously questioning the integrity of Reuters management (his own bosses) lends at least some more credibility to Reuters itself. This is strengthened by the fact that the blog post has remained up as well.

Compare this to the stories that went around when the Associated Press was announcing its silly and totally useless attempt to DRM the news. At the time, I heard from a few different AP reporters who thought it was a ridiculous idea that made the Associated Press look bad -- but they weren't allowed to say that publicly, and had no real outlet to do so. Reuters and the AP compete pretty directly in the newswire business, and every time I compare them to one another Reuters seems to come out ahead in recognizing where the world is heading. If it is true that Reuters spiked the Cohen story, that would be quite damning and could make me question trusting Reuters, but how it's handled this news so far, and how it's reacted to its own blogger talking about the story is impressive.

Filed Under: bloggers, pressure, reporters
Companies: associated press, reuters

US IP Interests Pressured Canada To Join In Its WTO Fight With China

from the teaming-up dept

In the WTO fight between the US and China -- in which the US declared victory recently, despite losing most of its arguments -- Canada had joined the fight on the US's side. However, as Michael Geist has discovered, by accessing government documents using the Access to Information Act in Canada, Canadian officials didn't see any reason to get involved at all, not believing the dispute impacted Canadians in any manner. However, it appears US officials didn't like that very much, and a rather heavy attempt to pressure Canadian officials into signing up ensued, with both US officials and the Canadian Recording Industry Association (often seen as basically a puppet of the RIAA) applying the pressure. While Canadian officials continually expressed doubt about participating, noting little evidence that China's practices had any impact on Canadians, eventually they signed on in support. As Geist notes, the end result has been quite damaging to Canada. Since the main points of the case were won by China, Canada signed up with the wrong side of the arguments and the effort has damaged Canadian relations with China. That's what you get for getting pushed around by the IP bullies...

Filed Under: canada, china, ip, lobbyists, pressure, us