French Competition Authority Fines Google Nearly $600 Million For Failing To Negotiate A Nonsensical Deal With Publishers 'In Good Faith'

from the ma-foi dept

France has long been in the vanguard of passing bad copyright laws. For example, it rushed to bring in probably the worst implementation of the EU Copyright Directive's upload filters. It's also keen on forcing Google to pay French press publishers for sending traffic to them when it displays clickable snippets of their news stories for free. Last year, the French Competition Authority said Google had no choice in the matter, and ordered the company to negotiate with French news organizations and come up with a deal that pays them to display even short excerpts. A year on, it seems that the French Competition Authority is not happy with the way that Google has responded:

At the end of an in-depth investigation, the Autorité found that Google had not complied with several injunctions issued in April 2020. First of all, Google's negotiations with press publishers and agencies cannot be regarded as having been conducted in good faith, while Google imposed that the discussions necessarily take place within the framework of a new partnership, called Publisher Curated News, which included a new service called Showcase. In doing so, Google refused, as it has been asked on several occasions, to have a specific discussion on the remuneration due for current uses of content protected by related rights.

And to show how really, really cross it is, the Competition Authority has whacked Google with an immediate 500 million euro fine (nearly $600 million). Somehow the French government body believes the following about that ridiculous amount:

[It] takes into account the exceptional seriousness of the infringements observed and how Google's behaviour has led to further delay the proper implementation of the law on related rights, which aimed to better take into account the value of content from press publishers and agencies included on the platforms. The Autorité will be extremely vigilant on the proper application of its decision, as non-execution can now lead to periodic penalty payment.

That periodic penalty is an equally salty 900,000 euros -- around $1 million -- per day of "delay". These figures are truly extraordinary, not least because a rational observer can see that, if anything, it is the French press that ought to be paying Google for the massive amount of free advertising it receives, not the other way around. It's all further proof that France has been driven mad by its hatred of big US Internet companies, and its equally weird love of maximalist copyright monopolies.

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

Filed Under: competition, fines, france, google tax, journalism, link tax, news, news bargaining code, news publishers, search, sending traffic
Companies: google

Daily Deal: How to Hack Bundle

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

The How to Hack Bundle has 8 courses to teach you all about ethical hacking. You’ll learn how to diagnose different kinds of cybersecurity attacks and how to defeat them. You'll practice all the skills and techniques in real-time using an ethical hacking lab so you can put your learning to the test. You'll experience real-time hacking examples while learning how to protect yourself against them. It's on sale for $39.

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.

Filed Under: daily deal

Leaked Data Shows NSO Group's Malware Was Used To Target Journalists, Activists, And World Leaders

from the not-your-usual-bad-guys dept

A massive data leak has confirmed what's been suspected (and reported by security researchers like Citizen Lab) for a long time: Israeli malware developer NSO Group's powerful cellphone snooping tools have been used to target journalists, activists, and dissidents all over the world.

The Guardian and 16 other media outlets have dug into the data leak and uncovered some pretty disturbing info about NSO's Pegasus malware, which allows those deploying the spyware to extract messages, record phone calls, and surreptitiously activate microphones.

Who's in the list of phone numbers seen by the Guardian? Lots and lots and lots of journalists.

The leak contains a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that, it is believed, have been identified as those of people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016.

[...]

The disclosures begin on Sunday, with the revelation that the numbers of more than 180 journalists are listed in the data, including reporters, editors and executives at the Financial Times, CNN, the New York Times, France 24, the Economist, Associated Press and Reuters.

Here's who's included in this first revelation by the Guardian:

[J]ournalists who were selected as possible candidates for surveillance by NSO’s clients work for some of the world’s most prestigious media organisations. They include the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the New York Times, Al Jazeera, France 24, Radio Free Europe, Mediapart, El País, Associated Press, Le Monde, Bloomberg, Agence France-Presse, the Economist, Reuters and Voice of America.

Also found on the list was the number of Mexican reporter Cecilio Pineda Birto, who was murdered while waiting for his pickup to finish being cleaned at a local car wash. This followed weeks of death threats that began after his reporting accused state police and local government officials of colluding with crime lords.

It's not just journalists being targeted by NSO's powerful malware. The list also includes numbers linked to religious figures, executives of private companies, union officials, high-ranking government officials, and NGO employees.

NSO, for its part, continues to insist it's not the bad guy here. It says it only sells the software to a "select group" of "vetted" government agencies. Unfortunately, that list of approved governments includes notorious human rights violators like the Saudi government (which killed Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi) and agencies in the UAE, Bahrain, and Kazakhstan.

The government of Mexico is one of NSO's most enthusiastic users. It "selected" 15,000 of the 50,000 numbers recovered in the data leak. This doesn't mean 15,000 successful deployments but it does mean the Mexican government -- which has no shortage of local criminals to target -- also apparently tried to infect phones owned by journalists.

NSO's hands are far from clean. Its list of clients isn't as selective as it likes to pretend. And while it may tell purchasers the spyware should only be used to target criminals and terrorists, it doesn't yank licenses from governments that choose to target journalists, academics, religious figures, and others.

Filed Under: activists, governments, journalists, malware, snooping tools, spyware, surveillance
Companies: nso group

It's 2021 And Bullshit Broadband And Cable TV Fees Are Somehow Still A Thing

from the you'd-think-we-would-have-fixed-this-by-now dept

For years we've talked about how the broadband and cable industry has perfected the use of utterly bogus fees to jack up subscriber bills -- a dash of financial creativity it adopted from the banking and airline industries. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise one rate -- then sock you with a higher rate once your bill actually arrives. These companies will then brag repeatedly about how they haven't raised rates yet this year, when that's almost never actually the case.

One 2019 Consumer Reports study found that about 24% of consumer bills are comprised of bullshit fees, generating cable giants $28 billion in additional revenue annually. The problem is just as bad over in broadband (see Centurylink's utterly nonsensical "Internet Cost Recovery" fee). Often cable and broadband companies will try to give such fees official-sounding names like "regulatory recovery" so that consumers falsely blame government for being nickel-and-dimed. But between TV fees, hardware fees, usage fees, and other surcharges, bundled customers dole out a small fortune every year for absolutely nothing.

It's fraud, but fraud that has somehow been normalized over decades.

I've been writing about this problem for the better part of twenty years, so it's disheartening to see the Washington Post still covering this bullshit in 2021 without much having changed:

"Most of the price hike that I didn’t expect was Comcast sneaking in additional “fees” — not taxes, just expenses related to Comcast’s cost of doing business. I’m paying $27.05 on top of my bundle price for Comcast’s cable service to carry local broadcast networks and pro sports games. Yes, my Comcast bill, [Consumer Reports senior counsel Jonathan] Schwantes said, isn’t as bad as many others he has seen, which can include 12 or more line-item fees. Some companies, he added, try to make people think their fees are government taxes, but they’re not.

Amusingly, Comcast tries to pass off falsely advertising low prices then socking users with bullshit fees as some kind of consumer benefit:

"Comcast tells me this is exactly what its customers want. It said it disclosed its copious additional fees to me in various fine-print communications — though only after I entered my credit card number. “We conduct extensive consumer research and host focus groups and incorporate our findings into the way we present information to our customers, all in an effort to help ensure they have a positive experience and can easily understand the details of their service,” said Jennifer Khoury, Comcast’s chief communications officer."

By and large, federal regulators couldn't give any less of a shit about this problem. That leaves a patchwork collection of State AGs who'll occasionally dole out some light fines and flimsy wrist slaps. But that leaves most consumers utterly unprotected from being ripped off by their local cable TV or telecom company. As you can tell from similar behavior in the banking and airline industries, the federal government, at some point, just declared it perfectly okay to rip people off with utterly nonsensical fees, provided you're just marginally clever about it.

Filed Under: bogus fees, broadband, cable, fees, hidden fees, price hikes, truth in advertising
Companies: comcast

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the who-said-it dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Bloof with a response to someone making the plainly silly claim that Section 230 was created specifically to induce acts of censorship of conservatives by social media companies:

Section 230 became law in 1996. Facebook was founded 2004, Twitter in 2006, YouTube in 2005, Google in 1998, MySpace in 2003... Cox and Wyden sure thought ahead writing a law to silence conservatives using platforms that wouldn't be founded for years!

In second place, it's That One Guy with a response to the outrage about the White House's mishandled efforts to flag disinformation on social media:

Funny how selective that outrage is...

The WH definitely seems to have botched this but I find it telling that apparently telling a platform 'hey, this is misinformation' and leaving it up to them to take it down or leave it up is considered a heinous violation of the first amendment but multiple proposed laws attempting to force platforms to moderate as the government demands is no big deal.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we've got two comments that racked up nearly-even insightful and funny votes. First, an anonymous comment responding to the assertion that "there is no first amendment protection for anyone to censor others":

Wanna bet? Let me give you a few examples where I would censor you, and not even remotely give a shit about your 1st Amendment rights:

• I'm sitting in a restaurant and you start blabbing about censorship next to my table. Guess who's gonna stand up and tell your stupid ass to shut the fuck up, and continue to do so until you do?
• I'm at home and you start yammering outside of it. Guess who's going to give you to the count of three to get the fuck out before you get the hose?

Those are just a couple of examples, but I'm sure with enough time I can come up with plenty more. Your statement is bullshit, and I'm flagging it - see? There's another one.

Next, it's Thad, with a rejoinder to our post about Hannah Cox's Washington Examiner article about Donald Trump's lawsuit, and the notion that millennials are the entitled "participation trophy" generation:

I forget who said it, but giving kids participation trophies and then mocking them for getting participation trophies is the most Boomer thing ever.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Thad with a comment callback following the failure of Roy Moore's lawsuit against Sacha Baron Cohen:

But that can't be right. Someone in the comments assured me that Roy Moore had a colorable claim because, quote, "Cohen isn't sweetness and innocence."

If the "sweetness and innocence" doctrine is not the bulletproof legal argument that an Internet Lawyer told me it was, then I don't even know what I believe anymore.

In second place it's Stephen T. Stone with a brief skit about the claim that Patreon is censoring people:

🤡: “Patreon is censoring people!”

🤔: “Who’s being censored?”

🤡: “I’unno.”

🤔: “Why are they being censored?”

🤡: “I’unno.”

🤔: “Why should we care about your claim, then?”

🤡: “Because I said so.”

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with another comment from Bloof, this time with a comment about the Palo Alto cops who claim a Black Lives Matter mural harassed them:

No wonder police departments feel they need military grade hardware to protect their officers, they keep recruiting people with skin so thin a stiff breeze can tear a hole right through them and any sort of criticism cuts through to the bone.

Finally, it's Jojo with a response to Florida's legal argument that it's not the state's new social media law that is unconstitutional, it's Section 230:

Ah, the compelling and strong maneuver in Legal Defense that every lawyer is aware of: “No U.”

That's all for this week, folks!

This Week In Techdirt History: July 11th - 17th

from the looking-back dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, the DEA seemed to be making some kind of effort to curb its abuse of warrantless wiretaps, while a report in the UK showed that police improperly accessed data on citizens thousands of times, and Sweden was considering making DNA that had been donated purely for medical research available to cops and insurance companies. Two senators were speaking out against efforts to expand FBI surveillance, and one of them who is well known to Techdirt readers — Ron Wyden — joined the podcast to discuss it. This was also the week that Pokemon Go took the world by storm, and we had an early mention of what is now a household name with a post about AstraZeneca trying to extend a patent.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, we wrote about why PROTECT IP would fail in its goals because people would never accept it, while lobbyists were ramping up the pressure to get it passed. Righthaven was accused of avoiding paying legal fees it owed and was ordered to stop delaying, while it continued to suffer loss after loss. And the Monkey Selfie drama continued, with a news agency telling us to remove the photos from our post and the photographer claiming he owned the copyright because he thought the picture might happen, while we looked closer at why the photo is likely in the public domain.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, a judge handed down a worrying ruling that said it infringes copyright to edit movies you've bought. The recording industry in the UK was asking ISPs to shut down the accounts of file sharers, but they were not convinced by the evidence, drawing the disappointing ire of indie record labels that were failing to innovate. There was also a lot of think-of-the-children panic happening, and we took a look at the overbearing ways people were trying to keep kids "safe" by tracking and monitoring them, while some in congress were blaming MySpace for troubled children.

Filed Under: history, look back

No, The White House Isn't Colluding With Facebook To Silence Dissent; But It Sure Could Have Handled Things Better

from the what-a-mess dept

Honestly, this is the last thing I wanted to be writing about today. First, let's make this clear: when I've seen political officials -- both Democrats and Republicans alike -- threatening to punish companies for 1st Amendment protected activities, I call it out. Indeed, I've been highlighting these kinds of issues for years -- and it has nothing to do with politics or ideology or who I like or who I don't like.

It's a simple fact: the US government should not be threatening or coercing private companies into taking down protected speech.

But, over the past few days there's been an absolutely ridiculous shit storm falsely claiming that the White House is, in fact, doing this with Facebook, leading to a whole bunch of nonsense -- mainly from the President's critics. It began on Thursday, when White House press secretary Jen Psaki, in talking about vaccine disinfo, noted that the White House had flagged vaccine disinformation to Facebook. And... critics of the President completely lost their shit claiming that it was a "First Amendment violation" or that it somehow proved Donald Trump's case against the social media companies.

It did none of those things.

On Friday, rather than recognizing how this whole line of argument would be weaponized, the White House doubled down, again highlighting how it was upset about misinformation about vaccines on social media, and then when asked directly about "Facebook" Joe Biden said "they're killing people." This is, of course, wrong. Facebook is not killing people. Some idiots on Facebook are spreading misinformation and disinformation that is likely causing people to die, but we should be putting the blame where it needs to be put. On the people spreading the disinformation.

Either way, the fact that the government might flag to social media companies that certain content is disinformation does not, in any way, reach the level of coercion or demands that would make it a 1st Amendment violation. There was no indication that the companies were told to take it down. There's no indication that anything happened other than the administration saying "Hey, this stuff is dangerous." And, I mean, if you're going to get mad at administrations demanding social media posts get taken down, it certainly looks like the Trump administration went way further than the Biden administration did in demanding such things (like that time with regards to posts advocating for the removal of confederate statues). I don't remember any of the folks now screaming about the Biden administration complaining when Trump actually did demand posts be removed.

Of course, that still doesn't make this necessarily the right approach by the White House -- and frankly, it's astounding that they walked right into this seemingly unaware of how it would all play out. Ken White wrote out the perfect way in which a smart White House would have dealt with this issue:

Here’s how the Biden Administration could handle the plague of deadly disinformation in a way that wouldn’t play into the Trumpist censorship narrative:

"The First Amendment and Section 230 let private companies like Twitter and Facebook choose how to moderate their sites. American free speech rights are exceptional and protect a very large amount of speech many of us would agree is dangerous or harmful. That broad protection helps insulate speech from political and ideological urges to censor. But the government has a leadership function as well as a governing one. Part of leadership is praising good behavior and condemning bad behavior, in hopes that people will do the right thing, without the coercion of law.

Facebook has a right to make money off of this alarming and deadly disinformation. But that doesn’t make it the right thing to do. Just as Americans have the right to say poisonous and ugly things to each other, that doesn’t make it right. When Facebook is exercising its right to profit off of deadly propaganda about COVID, it’s doing the wrong moral thing. It’s being a bad citizen. The First Amendment protects it from coercion, but not from criticism — yours and ours.

We call on Facebook to reconsider its stance. We’ve identified common anti-scientific propaganda that puts lives at risk. Facebook can continue to profit off of it. But it can choose not to. We call on Facebook to do the right thing - for Americans and their lives."

Would it really have been so hard to have done something like that?

Filed Under: censorship, content moderation, disinformation, intimidation, jen psaki, joe biden, orders, social media, vaccines
Companies: facebook

Five Palo Alto Cops Sue The City And Their PD, Claiming A Black Lives Matter Mural Harassed Them

from the must-have-hired-the-first-attorney-who-didn't-immediately-start-laughing dept

A group of California police officers has decided other people's expressive rights end where their personal offense begins. Five Palo Alto police officers are suing the city, along with their own police department, for somehow discriminating against them by allowing artists to create a street-long Black Lives Matter mural these officers passed on their way to work. (Well, at least up until the mural was removed by the city in November 2020, less than six months after it was first painted.)

The complaint contends harassment begins with the letter "E." From the lawsuit [PDF]:

The iconography at issue in the letter “E” of the mural is an image of Joanne Chesimard, better known as Assata Shakur, who was convicted in 1977 for the murder of New Jersey State Trooper Wermer Foerster, a white police officer. In 1979, while serving life sentence for the murder, Shakur escaped from prison and ended up in Cuba where she now has refuge and where the Cuban government refuses to extradite her to the United States. As result of her conviction and subsequent prison escape, Shakur was placed on the FBI’s Top Ten List 0f Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists.

The cops also have a problem with a "portion of a logo" that has been attributed to the New Black Panthers, an organization designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It's these two elements of the city-ordained mural that seem to be triggering (yes, and in that form of the word as well) the harassment allegations. That and the fact that the officers were somehow forced to pass the mural on their way to work despite -- as the Palo Alto Daily Post points out -- the officers having to go out of their way to subject themselves to it.

The police department is located at 275 Forest Ave., on the opposite side of City Hall from the mural. The two vehicle entrances to the department are in the 600 block of Ramona and Bryant streets, a half block from where the mural had been located.

Here's a little visual aid that shows how impossible it was for these officers to avoid being confronted by a controversial E:

Somehow the existence of this mural on a street a block away from the police department resulted in host of discrimination and harassment targeting this "protected" group of police officers.

Plaintiffs’ careers have been materially and adversely affected, and irreparably harmed and damaged by the conduct of the Defendants. Defendants, and each of them, created and allowed to exist harassing, discriminatory, and retaliatory work environment and failed to eliminate the illegal conduct complained of by Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs were discriminated against and harassed on the basis of their race, national origin, and/or color and retaliated against for exercising their rights to be free from harassing and discriminatory conduct in the workplace.

Moreover, Plaintiffs spoke out about and reported misconduct, retaliation, discrimination, and harassment in violation of state and federal law and reported such conduct to people above them in the chain of command. As direct and proximate consequence of reporting such misconduct—which constitutes protected activity under state and federal law—Defendants, and each of them, retaliated against, discriminated against, and harassed Plaintiffs and subjected them to adverse employment actions.Those adverse employment actions include, but are not limited to, refusing to eliminate the harassing and discriminatory conduct, and failing or refusing to investigate Plaintiffs’ complaints.

So, while the city did allow the mural to occupy the street and gave its blessing to the sixteen artists involved, it did not direct or supervise the content of the mural. And it's not really "retaliation" for the PD and the City to not remove a mural just because five cops seem super angry about it. Nor is it "retaliation" to refuse to investigate claims that are facially idiotic.

The complaints aren't any less specious just because a law firm signed off on it. The plaintiffs fail to indicate which protected group they believe they're in, which makes it appear the officers believe "police officer" ranks right up there with race, national origin, and skin color.

They also believe the mural bullied them in horrible but nonspecific ways.

As a direct, foreseeable, and proximate result of Defendants' harassing conduct and failure to act, Plaintiffs suffered and continue to suffer humiliation, embarrassment, anxiety, mental anguish, and emotional distress. Plaintiffs were required to and did employ, and will in the future employ, physicians and health care providers to examine, treat, and care for Plaintiffs, and did, and will in the future, incur medical and incidental expenses.

Welp, this lawsuit isn't going to help much on the humiliation and embarrassment fronts. Without more factual assertions about the mural's harassment of protected individuals who happened to pass by it on their way to work as public servants, it's probably not going to survive the first motion to dismiss.

The plaintiffs should be wary of trying to push this too far, because it really looks like the plaintiffs are trying to make the case that saying "Black Lives Matter" somehow means the lives of people who aren't black somehow don't. Their incorrect assumptions about the meaning of this phrase -- as well as their innate ability to be personally offended by certain elements of the street mural -- isn't even remotely in the ballpark of any legally actionable claims.

Filed Under: black lives matter, mural, palo alto, palo alto police department

Top EU Court's Adviser Regrettably Fails To Recommend Throwing Out Upload Filters, But Does Say They Should Block Only "Identical" Or "Equivalent" Copies

from the out-of-their-tiny-minds dept

One of the last hopes of getting the EU's terrible upload filters thrown out was an intriguing legal challenge brought by Poland at the region's highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). As is usual in these cases, a preliminary opinion is offered by one of the CJEU's special advisers. It's not binding on the main court, but can offer interesting hints of what the final judgment might be. Unfortunately, in his analysis Advocate General Saugmandsgaard Øe recommends that the CJEU should dismiss the action brought by Poland (pdf), because in his view Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive is compatible with freedom of expression and information.

That's a huge disappointment, since many hoped he would unequivocally rule that upload filters breach fundamental rights. However, the Advocate General's opinion is by no means a complete disaster for users of online sharing services. He recognizes the right of people to make "legitimate use of protected subject matter." Specifically, that means people must be able to rely on the EU's exceptions and limitations to copyright. Moreover:

In order for that right to be effective, providers of such [online sharing] services are not allowed to preventively block all content reproducing the protected subject matter identified by the rightholders, including lawful content. It would not be sufficient for users to have the possibility, under a complaints and redress mechanism, to have their legitimate content re-uploaded after such preventive blocking.

This is a huge point. It means that copyright companies cannot demand that upload filters block every use of their material, since that would prevent legal transformative uses such as memes, parodies, commentary etc. Saugmandsgaard Øe concludes with the following observation to the CJEU:

Consequently, sharing service providers must only detect and block content that is 'identical' or 'equivalent' to the protected subject matter identified by the rightholders, that is to say content the unlawfulness of which may be regarded as manifest in the light of the information provided by the rightholders. By contrast, in all ambiguous situations -- short extracts from works included in longer content, 'transformative' works, etc. -- in which, in particular, the application of exceptions and limitations to copyright is reasonably foreseeable, the content concerned should not be the subject of a preventive blocking measure. The risk of 'over-blocking' is thus minimised. Rightholders will have to request the removal or blocking of the content in question by means of substantiated notifications, or even refer the matter to a court for a ruling on the lawfulness of the content and, in the event that it is unlawful, order its removal and blocking.

Crucially, this says that unless it is absolutely clear-cut that there is copyright infringement -- because an identical, or equivalent copy is uploaded -- user uploads must not be blocked by default. Instead, a more detailed complaint must be made by copyright holders, possibly involving a request for courts to rule on the legality of a transformative use. That's very far from what those pushing for upload filters want, and represents a major limitation on the latter.

It's an obvious compromise position, and as such could well be adopted by the CJEU when it hands down its definitive judgment at a later date. Saugmandsgaard Øe says that yes, upload filters are acceptable in the EU, but can only be used to block identical, or near-identical copies. In his full opinion, he also affirms strongly and repeatedly that other legal uses of copyright material must not be blocked by upload filters. And there's a nice sting in the tail of his analysis. In a Postscript, the Advocate General comments on the European Commission's recent "guidance" to national governments on how they should implement Article 17. As Techdirt noted last month, this guidance introduced a huge loophole that would let copyright companies "earmark" any upload that they claim "could cause significant economic harm", even if likely to be a legitimate use of protected subject matter. Earmarked uploads would lack key legal protections, and Saugmandsgaard Øe is having none of it:

If this is to be understood as meaning that those same providers should block content ex ante [in advance] simply on the basis of an assertion of a risk of significant economic harm by rightholders -- since the guidance does not contain any other criterion objectively limiting the 'earmarking' mechanism to specific cases -- even if that content is not manifestly infringing, I cannot agree with this, unless I alter all the considerations set out in this Opinion.

This is basically Advocate General-speak for "you must be out of your tiny minds".

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

Filed Under: advocate general, cjeu, copyright, copyright directive, poland, upload filters