369 Bloggers Have Registered Under Russia's New Blogger's Law

from the some-still-say-fuck dept

Last year, we wrote about Russia's ridiculous new law that requires bloggers/social media users with more than 3,000 visitors per day to register with the government. Recently, we noted that Intel had shut down its Russian forums and blogs because of that law. But who is registering? Global Voices has the details on the 369 blogs and social media accounts that have currently registered.

They also asked the Kremlin why anyone would want to register -- and were told that registering could help attract more advertising dollars. But then, my favorite bit:

When asked how he would evaluate the effectiveness of the blogger law, Zharov said he would weigh the extent to which it succeeds in improving the “quality” of Russian blogging, by which he meant lowering the amount “profanity, unverified information, and libel.”

Yeah, sure, it's all about reducing "profanity" and not about silencing criticism, right? Oh, and if reducing profanity is the goal, this seems to be doing fuck all in helping with that:

Three of the 369 blogs on Roskomnadzor’s registry contain the word “fuck” in their names. One of these three is the Vkontakte community “Fuckbet,” a sports analysis website that provides “access to the best sports tips in the Commonwealth of Independent States” (presumably as an aid to individuals betting on the games). Another of this trio is “Fuck_Humor,” a Vkontakte group that specializes in amusing memes. One of the community’s most recent posts features a joke about fellatio, depicting what looks to be semen on a young girl’s thigh.

Last year, we had also pointed out that Russian officials were threatening to block both Twitter and Facebook for not cooperating with the government's new registry plans. The Global Voices article notes that since Twitter is not cooperating at all on this registry effort, the Russian government has been reduced -- no joke -- to begging Russian Twitter users to post screenshots of their analytics page so the government can determine if they're getting too many visitors.

When it comes to Twitter accounts, Roskomnadzor seems to have relied similarly on volunteers, as the ten Twitter users who now appear on the blogger registry are mostly pro-Kremlin media figures (plus a few Internet celebrities).

In fact, Roskomnadzor’s desperation with Twitter led it last month to solicit bloggers directly, and rather embarrassingly, for “screenshots” of their analytics data, which Twitter has refused to provide to the Russian government.

It's still unclear what Russia is going to do with those who have chosen not to sign up for the registry, but this move is still concerning for supporters of free speech and the right to express yourself anonymously.

Filed Under: anonymity, blogger's law, free speech, profanity, registration, russia

Intel Turns Off Russian Forums, Blogs & Comments In Response To Russian Blogging Law

from the silence-all-of-you dept

Back in April of last year, we were among the first to report on a very dangerous new law in Russia targeting bloggers, requiring any blogger or social media user with more than 3,000 "visitors" a day to register their real name with the government. The idea, obviously, is to put a massive chill on free speech among popular bloggers and social media users -- making it clear that the government is tracking everything they do. Just recently we noted how various social media platforms were responding to Russian demands that they censor or take down accounts related to opposition politician Alexei Navalny, or other critics of the government.

But the blogger/social media law has now gone into effect, and it's having an impact in all sorts of places. For example, chip giant Intel has now announced that it is basically turning off all ways to contribute to its Russian Intel Developer Zone in order to comply with the law.

In order to be compiant with the Russian Internet Bloggers Law the following changes will be implemented to Russian Intel® Developer Zone community as of January 1st 2015:

• Blog post contributions will be disabled
• Forum contributions will be disabled
• All commenting will be turned off for russian content

While it's unlikely that those in power in Russia today think this is a very big deal, recognize that taking Russians out of forums and discussions concerning key technological developments could certainly come back to haunt Russian technology development. This also comes about a month after Google closed down its Russian engineering office, in response to a different regulatory shift: a "data handling law" that would require all information from Russian users be kept in Russia (making it more easily accessible by Russian officials and the intelligence community).

All of these moves may be designed to shore up the existing leadership's political power, but it seems like a fairly short-term strategy, given that the end result is likely to hold back technological expertise and talent at a time when staying on top of technology is so important.

Filed Under: anonymous, blogger's law, blogs, forum's, free speech, registration, russia
Companies: intel

Copyright Office Rejected My Attempt To Copyright A Tweet

from the a-bit-of-data dept

Back in January, I had a brief exchange on Twitter prompted by this news story. The gist is that A. O. Scott, film critic for The New York Times, posted a tweet about the film Inside Llewyn Davis. The film's promoters took out a full page ad in the Times displaying the tweet (or more accurately, the last two sentences of the tweet).

The linked article's discussion assumes that Scott "own[s] the copyright to his tweets," but notes that by tweeting, Scott could be presumed to be granting an implied license for reuse of the tweet elsewhere.

But can you even copyright a tweet? I did some research and was unable to come up with a clear answer. There was some academic discussion of the issue, and occasional instances in which Twitter users claimed others were infringing their tweets, but I could not find a clear instance in which someone had actually registered a copyright in a tweet.

So, 7 months and $35 later, I have my answer: no, you cannot copyright a tweet.

That, at least, is what the registration specialist at the Copyright Office decided to send me in response to my attempt to register this tweet as a literary work entitled "Tweet #452″:

Monkey bar fallacy: a bad person using something makes it bad. E.g., users of monkey bars include: children, TERRORISTS #tor

Of course, the rejection of this particular tweet does not imply that no tweet can be copyrighted. Perhaps the registration specialist did not feel my tweet was valuable or creative enough, and thus did not pass the (very low) threshold of originality.

This makes me wonder whether short poems like haikus are eligible for copyright protection. Browsing the Copyright Office's registration database, I can find a number of registered literary works labeled "haikus" that are no longer than one page. Perhaps I would have had more luck if I had instead tweeted a haiku:

Monkey bar fallacy:
A bad person using something
Makes it bad.

(For sticklers, yes, I know it's not 5-7-5, but it is 17 syllables.)

Ultimately, I wonder if the Copyright Office applies more scrutiny to short literary works than it does to photographs. In the U.S., we work under the assumption that every photograph taken by a human being is copyrighted. But I take a lot of photos, and many of them take far less time, effort, and creativity to compose than a tweet. Here's an example:

Other countries have found that some photographs simply aren't creative enough to warrant copyright protection. Wikipedia has a brief summary and link to the German text of a Swiss case in which a reporter's photograph of a man holding record books was ruled ineligible for copyright.

It would be a fun, albeit expensive, experiment to try and register a variety of liminal works: handfuls of sentences, short quines, run of the mill photographs, "sculptures" made of a few Lego pieces, etc. I would contest the office's decision about my tweet, but I don't want to pay $250 out of pocket to do so, and I also don't really want to write a funding proposal to try and convince someone else to give me the money.

To wrap up this little experiment, the Copyright Office's online registration process allows registrants to submit comments with their registrations. I submitted the following text, although I have no way of knowing whether it was ever read:

In Ashleigh Brilliant v. W.B. Productions, Inc. (Civ. No. 79-1893-MBM, S.D. Cal Oct. 22, 1979), a U.S. District Court found that Brilliant's copyrights on three epigrams were valid and enforceable. The epigrams were 12, 15, and 10 words respectively. Each was a single sentence, lacking rhyme or meter; rather, their originality consists of their pithiness. Tweet #452's originality is similar: using 20 words and two sentences, it exposes the logical fallacy inherent in blaming tools, using humor and topical examples to communicate the point.

Circular 34 states that "copyright law does not protect names, titles, or short phrases or expressions." Tweet #452 is clearly not a name or title, leaving only the question of whether it is a short phrase or short expression. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a phrase as "a small group or collocation of words expressing a single notion, or entering with some degree of unity into the structure of a sentence; a common or idiomatic expression." Expression is similarly defined as "A word, phrase, or form of speech."

Tweet #452 cannot be classified as either a "phrase" or "expression," since it contain two complete sentences (i.e., two subject-verb pairs). Thus, Tweet #452 does not fall within the scope of Circular 34. Even if Tweet #452 were considered a phrase or expression, phrases or expressions as such are not necessarily ineligible for copyright, since Circular 34 specifies that only "short phrases or expressions" are ineligible for copyright, thereby suggesting that longer phrases or expressions are eligible.

This post and the included image are licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, and may be shared and reposted with attribution. When reposting, please include a link back to the original story, which will contain the most up-to-date version.

Filed Under: copyright, registration, tweet

Key Sony Gaming Websites Go Down Because They Let Their Domains Expire

from the spare-some-change? dept

As online gaming becomes more and more popular, we're of course beginning to hear stories of occasional missteps in how the online infrastructure is handled. The reasons for this can vary. For instance, maybe you're Electronic Arts and you've both made your game require a connection to your servers but you misjudged the load that would be on those servers. Or maybe you're Electronic Arts and you decide to shut down an online game without refunding the money people have spent to play it. Or, hey, maybe you're Electronic Arts and you decide to pull the plug on online gaming servers extremely soon just to push gamers into buying the next annual sports title. The point is that these reasons tend to be things that could be avoided.

Sony appears to be learning that lesson now, what with the gaming universe both shouting and laughing at them for forgetting to renew the domains on several popular gaming sites they run.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) sites www.soe.com and www.sonyonline.net were sometimes redirecting users to generic holding pages from Network Solutions. Some SOE-related sites for games such as Everquest, Everquest 2, Landmark and H1Z1 were also apparently affected.

The reason became quickly apparent: the domains of the sites expired. The details are basically that the renewal emails all went to a junk mailbox set up for an employee that had left the company a while back and were never actually seen by whoever had taken over their duties. SOE President John Smedley, to his credit, isn't even attempting anything besides an admission and an apology.

“The payment notifications went to a junk email box,” Smedley tweeted, adding, “Someone left and it got caught in the replacements junk filter. Simple as that. Embarrassing as that. No point dodging. DNS problems could take up to 48 hours to resolve,” he wrote, adding, “We are really really sorry on this one folks. Embarrassing and preventable. We screwed up.”

Look, it's unfair to expect anyone to never make a mistake, but this all comes off as bush-league stuff that we just shouldn't be reading about when it comes to a company like Sony, with all their experience in running an online gaming platform. Get it together guys. I mean, granted, I have no skin in the game, because I game the way God intended: in a dark room, playing alone, and with a cold craft beer next to me. But, you know, for all the other people.

Filed Under: domain expiration, domains, junk mail, registration, sony games, spam
Companies: sony

The Public Domain: Now Available For Only $165 An Hour!*

from the and-even-then,-we-don't-promise-anything dept

So you want to use a work you think is in the public domain in your creative project.  Hang on; it might not be as simple as you think.

Works published before 1923 are in the public domain. This means these works are no longer protected by copyright and are free for use by anyone in any way. However, works between 1923 and 1964 fall into a grey area -- they may be in the public domain depending on if their copyright was renewed 28 years from the date of the original copyright.

Figuring out if a work is renewed can be a tricky business. The only official records of renewal are held by the Copyright Office in Washington D.C. However, records before January 1, 1978 are not available online. The only way to gain access to these accurate and official records of copyright renewals is to either:

1. Go to the Copyright office in person, in Washington D.C. , and research their records using paper card catalogs OR;
2. Pay the copyright office $165 an hour to search the copyright records for the original copyright and the renewal notice.

In 2013, should we have to rely on paper card catalogs to help determine if a work is in the public domain? Moreover, is a work really public domain if it costs $165 an hour to know it's in the public domain?

Of course, there is a much larger problem. Even a search by the copyright office stating that the work was not renewed isn't definitive proof that the work you want to use is in the public domain. It's entirely possible that the work you want to use is actually a derivative work of a public domain work and still under copyright protection. For a great example of how complex this can get check out our video “Is the Wizard of Oz Copyright protected?”

The difficulty of assessing which works are in the public domain is a huge problem. Creativity cannot exist in a vacuum. When we can't easily determine what works we can safely use and draw inspiration from, creativity is stifled and our critical First Amendment right to free speech is chilled. New Media Rights recognizes the complexity of the problem. However, a great first step would be the digitization of all copyright office records to make them accessible to the public without a plane ticket to D.C. or a $165 an hour surcharge.

Teri Karobonik is a staff attorney with New Media Rights. New Media Rights is a nonprofit program that provides legal services and advocacy for internet users and creators. This story is reposted with permission.

Filed Under: copyright, liability, public domain, registration, search

Center For Copyright Information Loses Company Status, Not Supposed To Conduct Business In The US

from the strike-one? dept

TorrentFreak has discovered that the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), better known as the company running the whole "six strikes" scheme in the US, somehow had its company status revoked last year for reasons unknown. However, this could have serious consequences:

“If entity’s status is revoked then articles of incorporation / organization shall be void and all powers conferred upon such entity are declared inoperative, and, in the case of a foreign entity, the certificate of foreign registration shall be revoked and all powers conferred hereunder shall be inoperative,” the DCRA explains.

It also may face penalties and fines. It appears that this may have just been a paperwork screwup, which does happen, but given the organization's overall mission, you would think that they would have been a lot more careful dotting their i's and crossing their t's.

Filed Under: business, cas, cci, copyright alert systems, registration, six strikes
Companies: ccia, center for copyright information

Bangladesh Seeks To Throttle Independent News Sites And Their Awkward Stories

from the good-news-only dept

One of the great things about online news sites is that they are so easy to set up: you don't need a printing press or huge numbers of journalists -- you just start posting interesting stories to the Web and you are away. That is, you do unless you happen to live in Bangladesh, where new regulations will make it much harder to set up news sites, as this story from Access Now explains:

the regulation "stipulates that a onetime payment of Bangladeshi Taka 500,000 (USD $6,100) should be deposited with the Ministry of Information to get a license for an online news portal. Each year this license should be renewed by paying 50,000 Taka (USD $610). The license fee can be revised by the government at anytime."

To put those numbers in context, the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in Bangladesh, when adjusted for purchasing power parity, is roughly USD $1,700 per year. That ranks 196th in the world, right near the bottom.

Bangladesh is not only one of the poorest nations on earth, it also does pretty badly when it comes to press freedom, ranking 129 out of 179 countries listed on Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index for 2011-12. The new regulations seem likely to push it further down that list, not least thanks to rules like these:

The following program/news should not be published/broadcast: … (b) Any news/program that is violating the main principles of the state and the governance; … (e) Any indecent or provocative satire/music/advertisement/news or any program with subtitles that may pollute, corrupt or hurt peoples' feeling and morality. … (k) Any news/program that may hurt the feeling of any friendly country.

Other requirements are that the servers running the news site must be located inside Bangladesh, and that their IP addresses must be provided to the Ministry of Information. More bizarrely:

No local online portal should link to other local and international news portals.

As the Access Now piece points out, this suggests the Bangladeshi government doesn’t understand how the Internet works, since a news site without links to other online news stories is doomed to parochialism.

Or maybe that's the point. After all, it seems pretty clear that the measures are designed to stifle dissent and criticism of the government by making it very hard for independent news sites to be created except by well-funded outfits more interested in profits than protest, and hobbling them in various ways even if they do. It's particularly sad to see Bangladesh trying to restrict the use of a wonderful technology that could do so much to help lift its people from the difficult circumstances in which they live.

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

Filed Under: bangladesh, censorship, free speech, news, registration

SoundExchange, Once Again, Warns Artists That If They Don't Register, It Might Keep Their Royalties

from the again? dept

You may recall that nearly a decade ago, people began to question why SoundExchange, the RIAA spinoff created to collect satellite and internet broadcasting royalties, was allowed to keep any of the money for artists it couldn't find. That resulted in some controversy, when people realized that it was sitting on over $100 million and suggesting it might keep the money for a big list of artists it couldn't find. After much uproar, SoundExchange backed down, and said that it wasn't, in fact, keeping the money. And, to its credit, in the past few years, SoundExchange has been very good about working a variety of angles to get artists signed up to get the money they're owed from such webcasting royalties (such as those Pandora was just talking about).

However, some artists still aren't signing up -- and SoundExchange is apparently giving people something of an ultimatum, in which they hint at the fact that, you know, if they wanted to they absolutely could just keep the money.

Register by Oct. 15 as you may risk losing any royalties collected three (3) or more years ago by SoundExchange.

SoundExchange is authorized by law to release older unclaimed royalties to offset our costs and distribute proportionally to those we already pay. We have repeatedly held off on doing this, but we need your help to spread the word and get recording artists and record labels to register.

As some have noticed there are some pretty big names on the "unclaimed" list. Swedish House Mafia, N.W.A., Billy Bob Thornton, Sublime, Fleetwood Mac, Rebecca Black, Louis CK, Grandmaster Flash, The Byrds, Charlie Sheen, Brother Ali... and a bunch of others. I'm pretty surprised that Rebecca Black and Louis CK haven't figured this out yet... but there's one name on the list that is stunning: Gene Simmons. Simmons is famous for being focused almost entirely on getting money, even to the point of saying that artists should sue their fans. You'd think that somewhere along the line he'd notice that he should register with SoundExchange to get what's owed to him.

For what it's worth -- while there were some legitimate concerns that SoundExchange was doing little to "find" these artists, I no longer believe that's the case. Having watched their efforts over the past few years, they really have done quite a lot to try to get artists to register. Of course, this really just highlights one of the problems of setting up a system like SoundExchange in the first place. Creating unnecessary middlemen may seem like a useful solution, but it often seems to just prevent more direct support of artists. Still, if you are a recording artist of any kind, it's worth getting registered to avoid having SoundExchange keep the money it has for you for itself.

Filed Under: gene simmons, registration, royalties
Companies: soundexchange

Anti-Medical Marijuana Committee Fails To Register Published URL, Hilarity Ensues

from the you-can't-like,-OWN-a-URL,-man dept

Time for a pop quiz: get out your no. 2 iPads and see if you can figure out which steps in this process are out of order.

It's election season, a time when man's (and more recently, woman's) thoughts turn towards shutting off the TV, radio and phone until mid-November. But! Things must be voted on, including such controversial issues as legalizing medical marijuana and authorizing dispensaries. As an opponent of weed-based medicines, you vow to fight this with every ounce/gram of your being. You set your plan in action.

1. Pick a name for your committee. ("No on Question 3")
2. Pick out a suitable URL ("votenoonquestion3.org")
3. Get your committee and its pertinent information added to the official voters' guide (both print and online.)
4. Register URL.
5. Become aghast.

Can anyone point out where Vote No on Question 3 went wrong? Here are some visual aids, taken from votenoonquestion3.org:

You see, the internet is like magic. And like most magic, it can be used for entertainment purposes. All the do-gooding in the world doesn't amount to much if you forget to register your URL. While you're busy enjoying that "new ink" smell of freshly printed Voter's Guides, someone quicker on the draw is undermining your "marijuana is bad" propaganda proselytizing information with hilariously over-the-top headlines. 

The good news is that the online voters' guide sports the corrected URL: mavotenoonquestion3.com

The bad news is that the paper version will carry the old URL permanently. Of course, very few people are willing to type in a URL by hand, but as news of this blunder spreads, the fake site with the real URL will be receiving much more attention, voters' guide correction or no.

Here's the official reaction from No on Question 3 spokesman, Kevin Sabet:

"It's funny and upsetting, I guess, at the same time."

Yeah. Largely the first part. And to think, the committee can't even blame a late afternoon smokeout for the mental slip.

This statement, however, seems both more on point and more disingenuous:

The group sent out a press release saying proponents of medical marijuana were tampering with the democratic process through “underhanded efforts.”

Sabet admits the committee made a mistake and yet, the press release attempts to paint No on Question 3 as the victim of villainous pot smokers rather than treating it like the self-inflicted wound it is.

Oh, and here's more bad news for the "No" side:

The Globe notes that the No on Question 3 campaign has managed to collect all of $600 so far, compared to the $1 million or so that supporters of the initiative have received from Peter Lewis, a longtime patron of drug policy reform.

Maybe it's time to admit your fears of a weed-loaded America are overblown, especially when you've just been outmaneuvered (and outspent) by a bunch of stoners.

Filed Under: errors, marijuana, politics, registration, urls, vote no

Do We Need A 'Circle Section' Registry To Prove Digital Ownership?

from the interesting-ideas dept

If you look at the history of copyright law, it's really a never-ending story of the law adjusting (often quite awkwardly) to deal with changes in technology that the law never predicted and wasn't prepared to handle. We see this manifest itself in many different ways today, including the whole question of "ownership" in a digital age. When you "buy" a digital video or song, did you really buy it? Or did you just license it? Because copyright law doesn't handle this well, we have a sort of Schrodinger's cat situation, in which companies claim it's either a license or a sale depending on who's suing whom. In other words, it's a complete mess.

Entering the fray with a unique idea as an attempt to solve that, some folks (and a company who likely seeks to commercially benefit from this idea) are trying to convince the Copyright Office to create a new consumer ownership registration system, dubbed "circle section" after the character they'd like to use for it:
Unfortunately, they're marketing it like lawyers, rather than marketers, so there's a lot of verbiage surrounding the description everywhere they talk about it, but the basic idea is pretty straightforward (if I understand it correctly):

If you buy something digital, you can "register" your ownership right in that particular copy, which then would grant you basic ownership rights, including rights to format shift the content and to resell it under first sale rights.

The folks behind this project have set up a Change.org petition in support of this, where they're seeking 200,000 signatures, though, currently they have very, very few (again, perhaps an issue of being lawyers, not marketers). Separately, they've chosen an odd strategy for pushing this effort: filing a petition with the Copyright Office as a part of the process by which the Copyright Office comes down from the mountain every three years and declares which products can ignore the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause. Except... this project has nothing to do with that. So, the backers have filed a separate motion, in which they basically admit that this is outside the rules... but they're doing it this way because if the Copyright Office accepts the proposal, than the whole question of ignoring anti-circumvention issues becomes moot, because a registry of consumer ownership would make it pointless. Or something like that. You can read the full motion below.

This seems like an incredibly long shot no matter how you look at it, and I'm not sure that trying to jump into the magical anti-circumvention clearance debate is such a smart move here. That said, I can see how a proposal along these lines could be interesting as a possible way to deal with the question of whether or not you "own" the digital products you thought you bought. At the very least, I'd be interested in hearing what other people think about it. Personally, I wonder if it's really necessary, or if it would just become seen as another burden for users, needing to register and track their registrations.

Filed Under: copyright office, licensing, ownership, registration