German Regulator Rejects German Newspapers' Cynical Attempt To Demand Cash From Google

from the nice-try-but-no dept

Back in June we wrote about the ridiculous and cynical attempt by a number of big German newspaper publishers, in the form of the industry group VG Media, to demand 11% of Google's gross worldwide revenue on any search that results in Google showing a snippet of their content. We noted the hypocrisy of these publishers seeking to do this while at the same time having done nothing to remove themselves from Google's search -- and, in fact, using Google's tools to help them rank higher in search results. In other words, these publishers know that ranking high helps them... and yet then still demanded cash on top of that.

VG Media had specifically filed an arbitration request with the German government, but it has now been rejected. And, while German regulators didn't go so far as to say they found the claim laughable, they did the regulator-speak equivalent:

“Sufficient suspicion is always necessary to initiate an abuse procedure. The complaint from VG Media did not establish this,” Andreas Mundt, president of Germany’s Federal Cartel Office, said in a statement on Friday.

Those poor, poor newspapers will just have to go back to accepting free traffic from Google, via Google News (a site that doesn't have ads in Germany). Whatever will they do now?

Filed Under: copyright, germany, google news, newspapers, payments, snippets
Companies: google, vg media

DEA Paid Amtrak Secretary $850,000 To Hand Over Confidential Passenger Lists For No Reason

from the uh,-wow dept

We've already written about the DEA's deep involvement with the intelligence community, including them being trained to lie about getting info from the intelligence community when it uses it to bust drug dealers -- a system known as parallel construction, which is encouraged throughout the agency. We also know that AT&T (and possibly others) have employees embedded at the DEA to provide it with even faster access to any information that the DEA wants. We've also covered how the DEA often gets unchecked access to private information and has been caught circumventing laws to get medical records without a warrant. The DEA is also the force behind the NSA's recording of every phone call in the Bahamas.

Basically, as bad as the NSA, CIA and FBI may be, the DEA appears to be a pretty massive violator of civil liberties in pursuit of any and all information it can get its hands on. So, given that, it shouldn't be even remotely surprising that the DEA apparently forked over $854,460 to a secretary working for Amtrak to get her to hand over private passenger information for a period of 20 years. Except there is this:

The DEA could have lawfully obtained [this information] for free through a law enforcement network.

Also, it seems worth noting that it took Amtrak's inspector general 20 years to figure all this out, and then the operation decided to let the (unnamed) secretary retire (with $854,460 more than she "earned") rather than face any discipline.

On Monday, the office of Amtrak Inspector General Tom Howard declined to identify the secretary or say why it took so long to uncover the payments. Howard's report on the incident concluded, "We suggested policy changes and other measures to address control weaknesses that Amtrak management is considering." DEA spokesman Matt Barden declined to comment.

So, the DEA wasted nearly a million dollars to get private info that it could have obtained for free -- but which it probably shouldn't be allowed to have without a warrant. And the "rogue" secretary who forked over this info, while padding her own income, gets off without any consequence at all. Good thing she didn't download public domain material from the internet...

Filed Under: dea, passenger list, payments, privacy, secretary
Companies: amtrak

Law Enforcement Fails To Pay Telco Bills For Coughing Up Your Info

from the cheapskates dept

Senator Ed Markey has been very interested in just how often law enforcement requests information from telcos since back when he was in the other house of Congress, sending letters to the major telcos and releasing the details of their responses. There are good breakdowns of the total number of requests from the various telcos (and, damn, it's a lot) over at Forbes and PrivacySOS.

However, I wanted to focus in on just one element of the responses, from wireless carrier Cricket. One of the questions asked was how much money the company received in response to law enforcement requests. There is some reasonable debate over these fees for a variety of reasons. At one end of the spectrum, you can reasonably argue that if the government comes in and demands work from a private company, they ought to compensate them for the time -- and indeed, that's what the law allows (it says that such payments are to cover costs, not profit). On the other side, though, it seems... wrong for the government to pay telcos with taxpayer money to violate our privacy. Also, it raises the specter of companies profiting from coughing up our info to the government, and leads some to argue that the telcos do it willingly to make money. To be honest, it's such a drop in the bucket compared to other revenue streams, I'm not sure it really matters that much.

However, now it turns out that the government is really bad about paying -- at least according to Cricket. In answering the question about the money, Cricket noted that it doesn't make much, but the government often just ignores its invoices:

Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2706 Cricket is entitled to reimbursement for such costs as are reasonably necessary and which have been directly incurred in searching for, assembling, reproducing, or otherwise providing information in request to legal process received from law enforcement. For real-time requests for surveillance, Cricket is also entitled to reasonable reimbursement pursuant to 18 U.S.C 2518(4) for "reasonable expenses incurred in providing such facilities or assistance" in implementing Title III orders. Cricket is not entitled to, and does not make any profit on services rendered to law enforcement. Further, Cricket is frequently not paid on the invoices it submits to law enforcement. Cricket's fee schedule has not changed since the last response.

This is the first time I've seen that suggested anywhere. As awful as it may sound to see the federal government potentially paying companies to violate our privacy, it somehow seems even worse to promise to pay them, and then stiff them.

Filed Under: ed markey, law enforcement, payments, privacy, surveillance
Companies: cricket

Visa And Mastercard Ban Anonymizing VPNs... Just As They Allow Wikileaks

from the arbitrary dept

This is random. Just as Mastercard and Visa are allowing payments to Wikileaks again after a two year hiatus, those same two companies have started banning VPN providers. If you don't recall, the credit card companies refused to process payments for Wikileaks, following significant pressure from US officials, even as they have no problem processing payments to hate groups like the KKK. After a long legal dispute, an Icelandic court ordered the credit card companies to start processing payments to Wikileaks again.

Given all of that, it's quite bizarre that they're now cutting off various VPN/anonymizing services, as it should be quite obvious that there are tremendous perfectly legal and reasonable uses of such services. Personally, I have two VPN services, which I use when I travel, or am working from outside the office to make sure my data is encrypted and safe. It's really just good computing hygiene to use such a service. However, apparently, Mastercard and Visa would like everyone's data to be exposed.

It now turns out that these policies have carried over to VPN providers and other anonymizing services. Before the weekend customers of the popular Swedish payment service provider Payson received an email stating that VPN services are no longer allowed to accept Visa and Mastercard payments due to a recent policy change.

"Payson has restrictions against anonymization (including VPN services). As a result Payson can unfortunately no longer give your customers the option to finance payments via their cards (VISA or MasterCard)," the email states, adding that they still accept bank transfers as deposits.

The new policy went into effect on Monday, leaving customers with a two-day window to find a solution.

At least one of the VPNs so impacted, iPredator, is apparently looking at its legal options. Given Wikileaks' victory on a nearly identical issue, you'd think that the credit card companies would know better -- but perhaps they think that the VPN providers won't bother with a costly legal battle.

Filed Under: anonymity, encryption, payment processing, payments, vpns
Companies: ipredator, mastercard, visa, wikileaks

Unfortunate: Twitter Forces Flattr To Stop Its Twitter Integration

from the well-that-sucks dept

Just a few weeks ago, we wrote about how Flattr had integrated with services like Twitter and Instagram to make it incredibly easy to support content creators (including us!) by just favoriting a tweet. Not surprisingly, in the first month after that went into effect, we saw a boost in revenue from Flattr. Unfortunately, Flattr has now announced that Twitter has forced the company to stop this integration.

Flattr had been using the Twitter API to figure out what people had favorited, and had been gathering data about the specific tweets. However, Twitter told the company that it was violating section IV. 2 C from its API terms. That term says that:

Your advertisements cannot resemble or reasonably be confused by users as a Tweet. For example, ads cannot have Tweet actions like follow, retweet, favorite, and reply. And you cannot sell or receive compensation for Tweet actions or the placement of Tweet actions on your Service.

It's that last part where the trouble came in. Of course, it seems clear that that particular line in the terms of service was designed for situations where people are "selling" tweets or something similar. Not for cases where a service like Flattr is helping people make money from supporters. In response, Flattr even said that it would waive its standard 10% fee on any Flattrs that come via tweets. Twitter told them it wasn't good enough. Now, you can argue that "rules are rules," but rules need to make some sense. And it's unclear what kind of sense this makes. There's nothing about the way in which Flattr is using Twttier that is negative for Twitter. It seems like a really nice and useful addition. Obviously, we're somewhat biased, because it also helped us make a few bucks (not much, but some), but I can't see how it makes sense for Twitter to block this functionality.

Filed Under: api, integration, micropayments, payments
Companies: flattr, twitter

Google's Other Bad Idea: Offering 50 Million Euros To French Newspapers [Updated]

from the is-that-really-wise? dept

Earlier this week we wrote about a strange move by Google: apparently agreeing to pay the French telecoms company Orange extra to deliver its traffic -- thus abandoning the principle of net neutrality it has championed for so long. And now here's another dubious decision: allegedly offering to pay French publishers 50 million Euros in order to settle the dispute over the display of news snippets in its search results:

According to the report, French publishers turned down the €50 million (USD $66.6 million) offer and demanded a figure of €70 to €100 million instead. They also objected to the way Google proposed to disburse the money. The company reportedly offered to spend a third of the €50 million in the form of direct ad purchases while using the rest for commercial advertising partnerships between Google and the publishers. The publishers reportedly complained that too much of the proposed money was contingent on sales figures.

This suggests that Google is trying to frame these payments as more of a partnership with the newspapers than an acquiescence to their demands. That's no surprise, because if it is seen to be paying a license to display copyright material in this case, the pressure to do the same elsewhere will inevitably increase. In fact, it has already adopted this "partnership" explanation for the deal it cut with Belgian publishers last month:

We have reached an agreement that ends all litigation and represents great news for both us and the newspapers. We continue to believe that our services respect newspaper copyrights and it is important to note that we are not paying the Belgian publishers or authors to include their content in our services. From now on, Google and Belgian French-language publishers will partner on a broad range of business initiatives

It remains to be seen whether publishers in France and around the world will be happy to "partner" in this way, or whether some will hold out for a formal recognition by Google that it is paying them for a license to display snippets from their publications. Let's hope not: it would be a truly awful precedent that would undermine not only Google's business model, but much of the Web as we know it.

Update: Right on cue, Eric Schmidt has just unveiled -- you guessed it -- a "partnership" with French publishers:

Today I announced with President Hollande of France two new initiatives to help stimulate innovation and increase revenues for French publishers. First, Google has agreed to create a €60 million Digital Publishing Innovation Fund to help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers. Second, Google will deepen our partnership with French publishers to help increase their online revenues using our advertising technology.

So the price seems to have gone up slightly, from €50 million, to €60 million, plus unspecified amounts to "help increase" publishers' advertising revenue. But no mention of the dreaded "licensing" word in there, so maybe the French publishers blinked, and Google won this time. But expect the issue to come up again in other countries -- Germany, for example -- where Google might not be so lucky.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: france, newspapers, paying to link, payments, search engines
Companies: google

Swedish Pirate Party Sues Banks For 'Discriminating' Against Wikileaks

from the standing? dept

Earlier this year, we noted that a court in Iceland had ordered Visa to start accepting donations to Wikileaks again. There's been some cat and mouse games as the various payment processors, under pressure from US officials, cut off the site a while back. The latest, however is that the Swedish Pirate Party itself has pressed charges against Swedish banks for discriminating against Wikileaks.

The charges were filed eariler today with the Swedish Finansinspektionen, the authority which oversees bank licenses and abuse of position. This follows an earlier initiative from the Pirate Party to regulate credit card companies on the European level in order to deny them the ability to determine who gets to trade and who doesn’t.

“The blockade is a serious threat against the freedoms of opinion and expression”, says the Pirate Party’s Erik Lönroth, who has been preparing the formal charges. “It must not be up to the individual payment provider to determine which organizations are eligible for donations. At the same time, these charges will bring clarity as to whether the bank regulations of today are sufficient, or if regulations need to be tightened to protect freedom of expression.”

I don't quite understand Swedish law, so it's not entirely clear to me how the Swedish Pirate Party has standing in which to bring these charges. However, it looks like "charges" basically mean asking the relevant regulatory body to investigate whether the actions are legal. Given how much power a very small number of payment companies have over what can and cannot accept money online, it would be nice for there to be some rules against discrimination. Of course, an even better answer would be to create more services that can accept payment...

Filed Under: payments, pirate party, sweden, swedish pirate party, wikileaks

Paypal Pressured To Play Morality Cop And Forces Smashwords To Censor Authors

from the censorship-is-obscene dept

We have become quite accustomed to Paypal arbitrarily deciding to shut down the payment services for a website with no warning and little recourse. Usually when it does so, it acts through its own volition. However, Paypal also has to deal with the whims of the credit card companies with which it is partnered. With that business arrangement, when a credit card company says to jump, Paypal must comply. When it does so, it effects all its own customers as well. Ebook publisher Smashwords reports that it has become one of the latest recipients of one such action. Under pressure from credit card providers, Paypal has put in place a policy that it would no longer process payments for ebooks that contained themes of rape, incest, beastiality and underage sexual content. It then decided to give Smashwords less than a week to remove all books that fit those criteria.

On Saturday, February 18, PayPal’s enforcement division contacted Smashwords with an ultimatum. As with the other ebook retailers affected by this enforcement, PayPal gave us only a few days to achieve compliance otherwise they threatened to deactivate our PayPal services. I've had multiple conversations with PayPal over the last several days to better understand their requirements. Their team has been helpful, forthcoming and supportive of the Smashwords mission. I appreciate their willingness to engage in dialogue. Although they have tried their best to delineate their policies, gray areas remain.

Their hot buttons are bestiality, rape-for-titillation, incest and underage erotica.

This has put tremendous pressure on Smashwords to comply as it claims that it would be near impossible to change payment processors as Paypal is a major part in not only how it processes transactions but also how it pays its authors. So it has made several changes to its terms of service to account for the types of books that Paypal and its credit card partners are not happy about. Keep in mind, this is hard for Smashwords as it feels that authors of erotica are being unfairly targeted by this move.

We do not want to see PayPal clamp down further against erotica. We think our authors should be allowed to publish erotica. Erotica, despite the attacks it faces from moralists, is a category worthy of protection. Erotica allows readers to safely explore aspects of sexuality that they might never want to explore in the real world.

The moralists forget that we humans are all sexual creatures, and the biggest sex organ is the brain. If it were not the case, none of us would be here. Erotica authors are facing discrimination, plain and simple. Topics that are perfectly acceptable in mainstream fiction are verboten in erotica. That’s not fair.

This is an unfortunate set back for Smashwords as well as for indie authors. While the government in the US is not able to censor speech in this manner, there is little preventing a private company like Paypal or its credit card partners from taking these actions. Yet, Smashwords is not giving up hope. In its latest update, Smashwords notes that it had managed to get the deadline extended as well as the definitions of prohibited content relaxed. It also wants to clarify that neither it nor Paypal are the real villians in this issue.

A lot of people have been attacking Smashwords for my decision to comply with PayPal's requirements. They're pointing their arrows at the wrong target, and they're not helping their cause. We're working to effect positive long term change for the entire Smashwords community, and that includes all our erotica authors and readers.

Over the weekend, many Smashwords authors and publishers demanded we abandon PayPal and find a new payment processor. It's not so simple, and it doesn't solve the greater problem hanging over everyone's head. PayPal is trying to implement the requirements of credit card companies, banks and credit unions. This is where it's all originating. These same requirements will eventually rain down upon every other payment processor. PayPal is trying to maintain their relationships with the credit card companies and banks, just as we want to maintain our relationship with PayPal. People who argue PayPal is the evil villain and we should drop them are missing the bigger picture. Should we give up on accepting credit cards forever? The answer is no. This goes beyond PayPal. Imagine the implications if credit card companies start going after the major ebook retailers who sell erotica?

Smashwords then continues by expressing its goal of pulling the credit card companies out into the open to discuss these issues. The behavior of the credit card companies shown here is exactly the type of behavior we advocated against when fighting SOPA/PIPA. Those bills would have given credit card processors the abiltity to kill payment services to companies alledged to be illegal. We warned that such behavior would result in additional harm as legal speech would be swept up along with the potentially illegal speech. Here we see just that. These credit card companies are using their position to censor speech -- some of which may violate obscenity laws, but much of which is likely perfectly legal, protected speech. This is a no win situation for Smashwords. By complying, it must censor the speech of its authors. By not complying, it would lose the ability to serve all its authors.

Finally, Smashwords suggests a plan of action. It wants everyone to work together to put public pressure on the credit card companies in order to get them to change their stance. We saw how effective such efforts were with SOPA/PIPA. We managed to pressure Godaddy and the ESA to drop their support. We can do the same for these credit card companies and their policies that result in censorship.

Filed Under: censorship, ebooks, morality, payments
Companies: mastercard, paypal, smashwords, visa

Why We Don't Need To 'Think Of The Artists': They're Doing Fine

from the what's-the-problem? dept

Just as politicians routinely invite us to "think of the children" when they want to push through some new liberty-reducing law, so the copyright industries regularly invoke "the artists" when they want to justify longer copyright terms or harsher enforcement laws.

They claim they are being hit so badly by piracy that artists are suffering as a result. But that's a little hard to square with the fact that media companies still manage to pay their CEOs huge salaries. This suggests (a) the media companies are not doing too badly and (b) that if they really cared about the woes of their artists, they could alleviate it by redirecting some of their fat cats' hefty salary downstairs.

Of course, most people have long ago seen through this rather implausible concern on the part of the copyright industries, but that still leaves open the question of how artists are faring. Here's some interesting evidence that in Australia, musicians, at least, aren't doing too badly:

Even though recorded music sales are down, artists are taking a bigger slice of the overall music industry revenue pie - and more total revenue - than they have in decades. Largely fuelled by copyright-based performance royalties collected on their behalf by APRA and AMCOS, artists' revenues from public performance royalties have doubled in Australia from $110 million in 2000 to $220 million in the past 10 years. Compare that with the recording industry, where wholesale sales have dropped from $594 million to $384 million over the past decade and it seems that it is the record labels that are feeling more pain than the artists they claim are the major victims of online piracy.

As the writer points out, this suggests that artists aren't really suffering from the supposed scourge of piracy. And since everyone � even the record labels, apparently � agrees that what really matters is whether creators are able to make a living from their work, and thus carry on creating, this has to be good news. It also indicates politicians should stop trying to prop up the copyright industries' old business models and just let the artists get on with it.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: artists, payments, performance royalties

PayPal Agrees To Help IFPI Cut Off Funding For Sites IFPI Doesn't Like Without Judicial Oversight

from the how-to-stamp-out-competition dept

Neppe alerts us to the news that PayPal has now followed the same path as MasterCard and Visa, in agreeing to the IFPI's plan to cut off payments to sites it doesn't like, without any judicial review. Basically, the IFPI will send info about sites it doesn't like (i.e., describes as "rogue" sites) to the London Police. It's not clear what sort of qualifications the London Police have on complex copyright issues, but okay. If the London Police agree with the IFPI (and so far, they have in 100% of the cases), the information about the sites will be passed on to the three payment processing companies, and they will no longer allow those sites to accept payments. Watch out, Internet Archive (which has been declared an infringing site by some in the industry), you may soon no longer be able to accept donations, thanks to the IFPI's fear of technology.

Filed Under: london police, payments, rogue sites
Companies: ifpi, mastercard, paypal, visa