UK Government Censors Copyright Consultation Submission About How Awful Collection Societies Are

from the the-wrong-kind-of-evidence dept

When the UK Hargreaves Review of intellectual monopolies in the digital age came out last year, Techdirt noted that one of its innovations was an emphasis on basing policy on evidence. The fact that this was even notable shows how parlous the state of policy-making has become. One important way to gather evidence is through public consultations, and in the wake of the Hargreaves Review, the UK government conducted a major exercise in gathering views and information in this field.

The responses to that consultation have now been published -- all 471 of them. That's a surprisingly high number for what was once an arcane area of interest only to a few lawyers, and a measure of just how important the subject has become. On that Web page there's the following slightly unusual statement:

in the course of reviewing the responses received, it became clear that a small number of respondents had advanced criticisms or inappropriately criticised the activities of others in the sector. The Government has now carefully reviewed the submissions to establish any potentially defamatory material and has redacted any inappropriate or defamatory comments.

One of the people whose submissions were redacted is Andrew Norton. He's written a fascinating blog post detailing what exactly was taken out. The first and biggest redaction occurs in his answer to the following question:

What aspects of the current collective licensing system work well for users and rights holders and what are the areas for improvement? Please give reasons for your answers

Here's what the UK government published of Norton's response:

Almost no aspects work well for users or rights holders. The standard operating system for collecting societies is to demand all, demand often. There have been many cases in the recent past where agencies have gone above and beyond their mandate, and targeted people in shakedowns.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

In short, what aspects work well? None. What needs to be done? First of all, an audit needs doing, to ensure compliance with the law. Then, shut them down. At the very least start a new, independent one with significant oversight, because this one just DOES NOT WORK.

So what exactly did the UK government think was "inappropriate or defamatory"? This, apparently:

… and targeted people in shakedowns.

In the past few years, there have been reports of UK Collection societies calling up small businesses, and threatening them if they hear music in the background (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090202/0128383597.shtml), carollers, charities (http://torrentfreak.com/charity-forced-to-pay-copyright-police-so-kids-can-sing-071209/) have been targeted for fees, as have schools (http://torrentfreak.com/uk-copyright-cops-target-kids-schools-community-centers-081015/). Even people who sing to themselves have been targeted because they're doing so at work (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/8317952.stm) and let's not forget their targeting of employers like Kwik Fit (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7029892.stm) and even the police (http://torrentfreak.com/police-chief-faces-high-court-anti-piracy-action-120608/). Incidentally, The EU Court of Justice just ruled that in cases like these, there are no fees to pay (http://euobserver.com/871/115621#.T2cCyGfYteQ.twitter)

That's just one of three such paragraphs, all linking to external sites. As you may have noticed, the first link above is to Techdirt, and the others are to sites like the BBC, El Pais, Die Welt and TorrentFreak. None of them is defamatory, since they are all reporting on established facts. This means that the UK government must think that these facts are somehow "inappropriate". That's a pretty extraordinary state of affairs. The UK government has taken it upon itself to hide what UK collection societies get up to, in an absolutely key consultation, one of whose purposes is surely to get the facts about what's happening in this sector.

What makes this censorship of linked information even more striking is that alongside the main consultation document itself (pdf) the UK government also published guidance on providing "open and transparent evidence" (pdf), where we read:

When you draw on other work, a reference, and link to the original work should be included. References to other people’s work should have the relevant web link

That is, the guidelines specifically ask for precisely the kind of scrupulous linking to sources that Norton provided, and yet the UK government censored them all because it didn't like the unequivocally dire situation they delineated.

This does not augur well for the results of the consultation. It suggests that the UK government is happy to gloss over one of the key failings of the present copyright system -- the UK collection societies -- and is seeking to present a very partial view of the real situation. It also undermines confidence in the whole consultation process: if the UK government has arbitrarily redacted true information that it finds inconvenient once, what's to say it hasn't done so multiple times elsewhere? If people aren't allowed to provide all the evidence what's the point of conducting a consultation in the first place?

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Filed Under: censorship, collection societies, comments, government, redacted, uk

Using Wikileaks To Figure Out What The Government 'Redacts'

from the compare-and-contrast dept

We've talked in the past about the ridiculousness of the US government pretending that the State Department cables that were leaked via Wikileaks are still confidential. The reasoning, obviously, is that they're afraid that declaring anything that's become public is no longer confidential is that it creates incentives to leak more documents. But the actual situation is simply absurd. Documents that everyone can see easily and publicly... live in this world, a world where anyone in government has to pretend that they're still secret and confidential. There have even been cases where officials have gotten into trouble for using information from a "public" document, because they're supposed to create this fiction that it's not.

Still, there is one way in which this has actually turned out to be enlightening. A few months ago, the ACLU filed some Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the State Department on some issues, getting some of the very same documents that were leaked via Wikileaks. Except... the kind that came with the FOIA had redactions. The Wikileaks documents, for the most part, do not. That created an interesting opportunity for Ben Wizner at the ACLU. He could now compare and contrast the two version of the document, to see just what the government is redacting, and figure out if they're redacting it for legitimate reasons... or just to do things like avoid embarrassment. The ACLU then set up a special page allowing people to compare multiple versions of documents with just a simple mouseover. This came out a few months ago, but I didn't get a chance to write it up until now. It's pretty enlightening to see just what makes the censor's cut, and (not surprisingly) raises significant questions about the government's temptation to simply excise stuff they don't like, rather than information that there are valid reasons to keep hidden.

Filed Under: censorship, freedom of infromation, redacted, wikileaks
Companies: aclu, wikileaks

Freedom Of Information Document Dump From ICE About Domain Seizures Almost Totally Redacted

from the see-what-you-can-find dept

With the (way too late) return of Dajaz1.com after over a year of prior restraint and denied due process, there's increasing interest in Homeland Security's efforts to censor websites through its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division. Earlier this year, we noted that ICE appeared to be stalling in response to Michael Robertson's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for info related to the round of domain seizures that got Dajaz1 (as well as still unaccounted for domains OnSmash.com and Torrent-Finder.com).

Robertson has sent over the entirety of what ICE eventually sent over. They claimed to have found 754 responsive pages... but 144 of those pages are completely redacted. The other pages are also full of redacted info. I've gone through a few hundred of the pages, and it's pretty useless. It basically looks like the administrative paperwork ICE filed on its activities. Details are pretty slim, though you can catch a glimpse of their thinking here or there -- such as saying that when seizing domains that are still part of an investigation, "no seizure noticed should be issued to the violator." Ah, the US government -- seizing speech and refusing to even notify those impacted.

Either way, I figure with a lot more eyes looking over these documents, perhaps someone would pick up a detail or two that isn't readily obvious on a quick skim of all the documents... so have at the embeds below:

Filed Under: domain seizures, foia, homeland security, ice, redacted

Viacom: Court Should Grant Summary Judgment Over YouTube, But It's A Secret Why

from the um,-what? dept

The Viacom vs. Google/YouTube lawsuit has become something of a running joke in legal circles over the amount of time it's taken to run through the discovery process and actually get the lawsuit moving. However, people are now expecting the case to finally move forward. Both Google and Viacom have asked for summary judgment, claiming that there's enough evidence that a trial isn't needed. That's all to be expected. What's odd, though, is that Viacom's filing has pretty much the entire "background" section redacted. Check out page two on the document below: I'm trying to figure out what could possibly be so confidential as to require redacting in such a case. Maybe the details of why Viacom thinks Google can identify which clips are infringing when even Viacom couldn't properly identify infringing clips and included a bunch that it had put online itself. Because thinking that Google can figure out Viacom's intentions when even Viacom can't figure them out certainly seems like a pretty big mystery to me.

Filed Under: copyright, music, redacted, summary judgment
Companies: google, viacom, youtube