Copyright Strikes Again: No Online Access To UK Internet Archive

from the you're-doing-it-wrong dept

Last week we wrote about how Norway had come up with a way to provide online access to all books in Norwegian, including the most recent ones, available to anyone in the country. Here, by contrast, is how not to do it, courtesy of publishers in the UK:

The UK is preparing to launch its official internet archive without internet access, after the publishing industry put restrictions on its release.

The archive was held up by a decade of negotiations between publishers and the British Library, meaning that regulations permitting the library to perform its first archive copy of every UK website were not passed until April this year, more than 20 years since the World Wide Web took off and 10 years since Parliament passed a law making it possible.

In my post about the Norwegian system, I joked about what form a typical copyright maximalist approach to providing online access to a nation's heritage might take:

available in a specially constructed room deep in the basement of the National Library on a (small) screen, and with guards stationed either side of it to ensure that no unauthorized copies were made.

Little did I suspect that reality was way ahead of me, as the story in Computer Weekly quoted above explains:

The British Library gave the first demonstration of the UK internet archive to publishers last week, to demonstrate how it would meet their restrictions that the only people who could see it were those privileged few people eligible for readers' passes at one of the UK's six major academic libraries -- and only then one at a time, in person, at a terminal in the library.

What's particularly tragic here is that the ten years of foot-dragging and obstructionism by the British publishers has resulted in a loss of countless millions of older Web pages that are now probably gone for ever -- and with them, a key part of the UK's early digital heritage. Once again, we see that contrary to the dogma, copyright does not always promote culture, but can destroy it, too.

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

Filed Under: access, copyright, internet archive, uk

TAFTA/TTIP: What Price Transparency?

from the one-law-for-the-rich,-one-law-for-the-poor dept

One of the key problems with TAFTA/TTIP is the same one that plagued ACTA and has recently been highlighted with TPP: the complete lack of any meaningful transparency. However much the negotiators may claim that transparency is important to them, there's no evidence to support that view. Or perhaps the politicians think the existence of conferences like one being held in Brussels next January provide enough opportunities for anyone who wants to convey their views to the EU's Chief Negotiator, say. He'll be attending, along with several other senior European Commission officials, according to the program.

Unlike many overpriced conferences, the costs for this one seem quite reasonable: it charges less for NGOs and not-for-profit organizations than for corporate visitors, and will try to accommodate those who can't afford even that:

We realise the importance of including all groups in the discussions at our events, and will always do our best to ensure that nobody is excluded due to not being able to afford the conference fee.

If you find the charge for tickets a barrier to attending, please let us know and we will endeavour to come to an arrangement to facilitate your participation. Please note however that this applies to individuals, unfunded academics/students and representatives of small charities, not businesses, individuals funded by an organisation, or larger charities/not-for-profit organisations.

That's to be commended, because otherwise members of the public whose means are very limited are inevitably excluded from such important opportunities to make their views known to key political figures in the TAFTA/TTIP negotiations (although they still have the cost of getting to Brussels...) But there's one area where money most certainly talks at this conference. The "Sponsorship Prospectus" (pdf) spells out some of things that can be bought. For example, for a mere €4000, you can be "Exclusive Host of VIP & Speaker Dinner" with the following benefits:

Opportunity to speak during dinner debate
Three-course dinner for speakers and high-level invited guests
Three seats at dinner reserved for your representatives or guests
Corporate identity displayed in dining area during dinner
Corporate identity included on menu cards
Full page advert in programme
3 complimentary delegate places

Then there are really major sponsorships that aren't even up for grabs -- things like becoming the conference's "Platinum Sponsor", which turns out to be the Business Software Alliance (BSA). I wonder what the BSA receives in exchange for that sponsorship: special access to some of the key people taking part, certainly, and probably the EU's Chief Negotiator too. Given that the BSA was originally in favor of SOPA, we can guess what its representatives at this conference will be saying to him when they meet.

And that's the real problem here. Those able to pay for sponsorship are granted a level of direct and concentrated access that the mere conference plebs -- even if admitted free of charge thanks to the organizer's laudable generosity -- will never enjoy. That might not matter if there were plenty of other ways for the public to make their views known to the TAFTA/TTIP negotiators, but as we know, there aren't any.

Which means that the vast disparity in influence that exists between the rich and powerful who already have an inside track to TAFTA/TTIP officials, and the hundreds of millions of people in whose name the negotiations are supposedly being held, will be made even greater by events such as the one taking place in Brussels next year. That's not the fault of the conference organizers, of course, but it's certainly is the fault of the US and EU politicians that mouth platitudes about TAFTA/TTIP's transparency while failing to put into practice.

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

Filed Under: access, negotiations, sponsorships, tafta, tpp, trade agreements, transparency, ttip
Companies: bsa

Increasing European Moves To Block Access To Websites Accused Of Helping People Infringe Copyrights

from the slippery-slope dept

In their obsessive war on piracy, the copyright industries have tried various approaches. For a while, the "three strikes and out" was popular, until it became clear that it was completely ineffectual. At the moment, the preferred method is to try to force ISPs to block access to sites holding material that infringes on copyright. The UK led the way, and has now made the whole process pretty routine, as a recent post on the TechnoLlama blog explains:

The blocking order follow a now familiar pattern established in 20th Century Fox v BT: lawyers for the film and/or music industry go to court against UK ISPs to try and obtain an injunction that will block access on those to a specific website. The subject websites are not included as co-defendants, and their guilt tends to be assumed, or dealt with separately. The websites are then blocked at the ISP level, meaning that any person who enters "www.thepiratebay.sx" into their browser will receive a notice stating that the site is not available.

The fact that it is easy to circumvent these blocks doesn't seem to worry the industry much: either the only concern is to make it hard for less tech-savvy users to access a site, or maybe a symbolic victory is all that is required. In any case, the approach is beginning to spread in Europe. For example, Switzerland is currently reviewing the operation of copyright in a digital world, and blocking content is likely to be one of the recommendations from the AGUR12 working group -- following the usual heavy-handed hints by the USTR, as TorrentFreak explains:

According to a report obtained by NZZ am Sontagg, AGUR12 have concluded that Swiss Internet service providers should be forced to delete content if hosted on Swiss-based sites. Most controversially their final report, which is now being sent to the Justice Minister, states that ISPs should display warnings when users attempt to access unauthorized content sources while "obviously illegal sites" should be rendered entirely inaccessible.

As usual, that begs the question which sites are "obviously illegal." Meanwhile, in Belgium, the authorities continue their forlorn attempt to shut down The Pirate Bay and its proxies:

The Supreme Court of Belgium has ordered local Internet providers to proactively search for Pirate Bay proxies, and block subscribers' access to these sites. The order is one of the most far-reaching decisions when it comes to website blocking based on copyright infringement grounds. A spokesperson for Belgacom, one of the largest ISP, describes the verdict as disproportionate and unacceptable.

But perhaps the most important news on the Web blocking front concerns Europe's highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Austrian Supreme Court had sought guidance on whether injunctions could be brought against ISPs whose users were accessing sites that infringed on copyright. As is usually the case, before the Court of Justice hands down its opinion, a kind of pre-opinion is given by the Advocate General (pdf), in this case Pedro Cruz Villalón. Here's his view on the situation:

In his Opinion today, Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalón takes the view that the internet provider of the user of a website which infringes copyright is also to be regarded as an intermediary whose services are used by a third party -- that is the operator of the website -- to infringe copyright and therefore also as a person against whom an injunction can be granted. That is apparent from the wording, context, spirit and purpose of the provision of EU law.

This bad news that ISPs can be regarded as intermediaries is tempered slightly by the following:

The Advocate General is also of the view that it is incompatible with the weighing of the fundamental rights of the parties to prohibit an internet service provider generally and without ordering specific measures from allowing its customers to access a particular website that infringes copyright.

The Advocate General adds one other qualification:

It is for the national courts, in the particular case, taking into account all relevant circumstances, to weigh the fundamental rights of the parties against each other and thus strike a fair balance between those fundamental rights.

This is not the final ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union itself, which could take a completely different view of things, but that is unlikely. So we can probably expect to see even more Web sites blocked in Europe at the behest of film and music companies. That's a huge pity. It imposes costs on ISPs that have nothing to do with the infringement, and it distracts copyright companies from the real solution: providing better access to legal offerings at fair prices.

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

Filed Under: access, blocking, censorship, copyright, eu court of justice, eucj, europe, infringement, secondary liability

MN State Rep Joins 17 Others In Suing State For Illegally Accessing Drivers License Data

from the sorry-about-the-violations,-here's-someone-else's-money dept

You know you've gone too far in abusing access to the public's data when you've got a local politician doing something more than yelling about it on the campaign trail. Earlier this year, a report by state auditors discovered that more than half of Minnesota's 11,000 law enforcement agents had misused the Driver and Vehicle Services (DVS) database.

This discovery led to the filing of a few lawsuits, but as further details have emerged, bigger plaintiffs are filing bigger lawsuits.

Steve Drazkowski, a Republican Minnesota state representative, becomes the latest politician in the state to sue various local and state agencies over public employees accessing his and his family’s driver’s license data as part of a campaign of political retaliation. He is suing along with 17 other state residents who say their data was accessed more than 600 times since 2003. Drazkowksi says the actions go back to when he first ran for state office, and was motivated by his fiscally conservative stance toward unions.

It's probably not a good idea for public servants to further irritate a state rep who already takes a very dim view towards unions and the public sector in general. Erick Kaardal, the attorney representing the group, says the data accesses were clearly politically-motivated.

For example, [Kaardal] said, the plaintiffs' data was accessed after announcements for political candidacy, on the day letters critical of the government were printed in the newspaper and on dates immediately following county board meetings where group members challenged public officials.

"They even went after the private data of my wife and my daughter — why?" State Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, said in the statement.

If these public servants were expecting to dig up a little dirt or intimidate someone, it clearly backfired. If that was the intent, it seems like it would have been cheaper to pay a per diem to a private investigator and send out someone from New Jersey waste management to take out a few kneecaps.

Federal law allows for a minimum of $2,500 for each violation of the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, which makes it illegal to get an individual's private data without a legitimate purpose. Kaardal said damages could exceed hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That's 600 alleged violations at $2.5k each in this lawsuit alone. Across the state, 530 additional claims have been filed against 160 municipalities. And Tom Grundhoefer, general counsel of the League of Minnesota Cities, says the number is "going up daily."

Also named in many of the lawsuits is the Department of Public Safety itself, which is accused of allowing "lax access" and failing to crack down on the "widespread abuse" uncovered by the state's audit.

Ultimately, though, this will all land on the public, not because they accessed the records illegally, but because collecting settlements from state agencies means handing out tax dollars. Public servants are supposed to be good stewards of the money they've been entrusted with. Violating citizens' privacy and then asking them to pay for these violations is screwing them twice.

Filed Under: access, database, drives license, minnesota, privacy

Canadian Member Of Parliament, Responsible For Opposition Trade Policy, Denied Access To TPP Negotiations

from the that-doesn't-sound-right dept

Defenders of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations in the US like to note that every member of Congress has access to the negotiating documents of the massive trade agreement. Of course, that's not telling the full story. While lobbyist "advisers" like those from the MPAA can simply log into an online account and see the details from their personal computers, members of Congress have to go to the USTR office, where they can see a copy of the document, but they're not allowed to bring any staffers (such as those who are experts on trade policy), nor are they allowed to make any copies or take any notes.

However, it appears that up in Canada, things may be even more ridiculous. Don Davies is a Canadian Member of Parliament who notes that he's been denied access to information about the ongoing TPP negotiations, of which Canada is supposedly a member:

“The TPP is a sweeping agreement covering issues that affect many areas of Canada’s economy and society – including several areas of policy that have never been subject to trade agreements before,” said Davies. “By keeping Parliament completely in the dark on negotiations the Conservatives also leave Canadians in the dark and, for an agreement of this magnitude that is abnormal and unacceptable.

“If the US can allow its legislators to see the TPP text, there is no reason that Canada can’t,” Davies said.

In this case, it's doubly ridiculous. Davies is a member of the NDP party, which is not in power, but his role is as the Official Opposition Critic for International Trade. In other words, he's basically the trade policy expert for the NDP, and as such, you'd think he should at the very least be included in the details of ongoing negotiations. Yet again, though, it seems that the main negotiating parties involved in the TPP have realized that the best way to get across an agreement they like is to keep it as secretive and non-transparent as possible, especially from critics. This is the exact opposite of how democratic governments are supposed to work.

Of course, the addition of Canada to the TPP has always been done in a way to keep our neighbor up north as a silent partner to the US's position. You may recall that the US didn't let Canada join until well into the negotiating process, and as part of the invite, Canada was told that it had to accept all negotiated text without question, even though it wasn't allowed to see it yet. And, related to that, they had to agree to future texts during some meetings where they weren't allowed to attend. To now find out that the Conservative Party, which is currently in power, is going even further and blocking the opposition from having any visibility at all into the agreement is just ridiculous.

Filed Under: access, canada, don davies, ndp, tpp, transparency

A Human Right To Science, Locked Behind A Paywall, Inspires New Meme

from the bp;dr dept

We've spoken out for a long time about why paywalls are generally a bad idea. Sure, they can earn some companies a bit of money that may slow down their decline, but there's little evidence that they can be useful in the long term. Paywalls go against almost every core concept of what works online. They make information harder to share, harder to discuss, harder to build upon. They also open up huge opportunities for others, who don't have paywalls, to step in and scoop up the missing traffic. Over at the Neurobonkers blog, they've noticed something rather ironic in a new paper from the famed journal Science, called A Human Right to Science. Apparently, that "right to science" is so strong that Science (with a capital S) has locked it up behind a paywall. In response, the folks at Neurobonkers have tried coining a new meme, known as bp;dr, or "behind paywall, didn't read" a play on the well known tl;dr. There is an unfortunate irony at work here. Having an article on the human right to access... and then making sure it's not accessible. Whose bright idea was that?

Filed Under: access, behind paywall didn't read, bp;dr, paywalls, science

Accessing A Public Website Is Not A Crime, And Craigslist Should Back Away From Its Lawsuit Claiming Such

from the bad-legacy dept

We've written a few times about Craigslist's unfortunate and misguided lawsuit against 3taps and Padmapper, companies which aggregated Craigslist data, allowing others to build useful services on top of Craigslist, driving additional traffic and usage back to Craigslist. It's upsetting on the basic level that Craigslist is attacking companies that make its data more useful, and it's doubly upsetting given that Craigslist itself is generally such a big supporter of basic internet freedoms and good policy online. To see it so aggressively attack some other innovators -- with very broad and dangerous interpretations of both copyright law and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is immensely troubling. Perhaps more troubling is that the district court initially bought some of Craigslist's expansive arguments on both fronts (while pushing back on the most extreme arguments). Still, the ruling was dangerous on many levels, and now the EFF (which often works with Craigslist on things) has filed an amicus brief arguing against this dangerous interpretation.

Specifically, the EFF is (quite reasonably) concerned about the court's ruling that said because Craigslist sent a cease and desist letter to 3taps, and 3taps changed its IP address and continued visiting Craigslist's site, that it had violated the CFAA -- even though the website was freely available to the public.

The CFAA does not and should not impose liability on anyone who accesses information publicly available on the Internet. Because the CFAA and Penal Code § 502 imposes both civil and criminal liability, it must be interpreted narrowly. That means information on a publicly accessible website can be accessed by anyone on the Internet without running afoul of criminal computer hacking laws. In the absence of access, as opposed to use, restrictions, Craigslist cannot use these anti-hacking laws to complain when the information it voluntarily broadcasts to the world is accessed, even if it is upset about a competing or complementary business.

EFF points out, both in its blog post and in its filing, how much Craigslist itself benefits from an open internet, and why it's not good that it's now fighting against that very principle.

But benefits to this openness remain and Craigslist itself is a notable example of these benefits. Craigslist provides a popular and wide reaching classified advertising service, allowing people to post mostly free classified ads that can be seen by anyone anywhere in the world without charge. Craigslist claims that 60 million people use Craigslist in the United States each month, that 100 million classified ads are posted each month and that the site receives 50 billion page views per month. It receives 2 million new job postings a month, supports advertisements posted in 13 different languages and has more than 700 local sites in 70 countries. It is one of the 25 most visited websites in the United States.

Craigslist’s enormous success is a result of its openness: anyone anywhere can access any of its websites and obtain information about apartments for rent, new jobs or cars for sale. Its openness means that Craigslist is the go to place on the web for classified ads; it users post on Craigslist because they know their ads will reach the largest audience.

But what Craigslist is trying to do here is to use the CFAA’s provisions to enforce the unilateral determinations it has made concerning access to its website, an Internet site that it has already chosen to open up to the general public, attempting to turn a law against computer hacking into a new tool. But prohibiting access to an otherwise publicly available website is not the type of harm that Congress intended to be proscribed in the CFAA, and nowhere in the legislative history is there any suggestion that the CFAA was drafted to grant website owners such unbridled discretion.

Hopefully the court recognizes the troubles of its earlier ruling, and Craigslist also recognizes the folly of this approach.

Filed Under: access, cfaa
Companies: 3taps, craigslist, eff, padmapper

How Overclassification Makes Secrets Less Likely To Remain Secret

from the doing-it-wrong dept

There's a really good point in a recent Washington Post article talking about how nearly 4 million people have top secret clearance in the US these days. The problem isn't necessarily that so many people are given that clearance, but that so many people need to be given that clearance because the US government reflexively overclassifies things, meaning that basic banal office work sometimes can't get done unless you hire "low level" people with top secret clearance:

One reason for this trend is that the U.S. government has become so reflexive about classifying information, much of which is not nearly as sensitive as an NSA spying program, that clearance are required even for totally banal work.

One effect of this classification of nearly everything, and subsequent granting of clearances to nearly everyone, is that all it takes is one or two loose cannons among those 4 million clearance-holders to spill out government secrets.

As many people have pointed out, both Ed Snowden and Bradley Manning were relatively "low level" employees, but had access to all sorts of classified materials. While some spin around and attack them, given just how many people have top secret clearance and access to these materials, it's quite likely that this information has already spread widely -- including to foreign governments. I'd much rather these things be discussed in public and via the press, than finding out later that they were just passed along to foreign governments. If the content of these classified files is really so secret and sensitive to national security, then the government needs a better way of handling that information.

As it stands, the overclassification of files leads to more people needing top secret clearance, and that means about 4 million with such clearance, including all sorts of low level employees, doing basic office work, including "packing and shipping." And, rather than keeping that material secret, by exposing it to so many more people, this overclassification is almost guaranteeing that the content is less secret.

Filed Under: access, overclassification, secrecy, top secret

Do Dutch Spies Also Have Access To PRISM's Data? And If So, Who Else Does?

from the clear-as-mud dept

In the wake of the leaks about NSA's spying activities around the world, one of the interesting subsidiary questions is: who else had access to this stuff? We know that the UK did, and now there are indications the Dutch did as well, according to this report on DutchNews.nl:

Justice minister Ivo Opstelten on Tuesday refused to comment on claims the Dutch security service AIVD works together with the US secret services in collecting information from email and social media traffic.

…

Dutch security service AIVD has also received information on email and social media traffic via US spy system PRISM, the Telegraaf reports on Tuesday.

Some pretty dramatic claims are being made:

If the AIVD lists an American address as suspicious, it is supplied all the information within five minutes, a source told the paper. The source worked for the department which monitored potential Dutch Muslim extremists, the paper said.

Dutch companies also cooperated with the US authorities' request for information, the source said, claiming that 'there are agents ready to deal with requests for information inside companies and institutions.'

'There are a couple of those secret programmes like Prism active in the Netherlands,' the source is quoted as saying.

There are a few points to note here. First, this is a report about a story in the Dutch newspaper Telegraaf, which draws on unnamed sources. So the chain of information is quite long, and it's likely that details have been lost or mischaracterized along the way. It's also worth noting that PRISM is not the only system mentioned here for gleaning information about people. That's probably muddying the waters yet more, as sources reveal tantalizing information about other spying initiatives that then get subsumed under the general heading of PRISM, simply because it's in the headlines at the moment.

That's not to minimize the shocking nature of these revelations -- the idea that spies around the world may be accessing within minutes any private information they want, is troubling -- merely to note that the picture we have of what is going on remains frustratingly vague. And that, of course, is an argument for more transparency from the authorities, both in the US and elsewhere, about what is really happening to our personal information when we go online, and who has access to it.

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

Filed Under: access, data, europe, netherlands, nsa, nsa surveillance, prism, us

Once Again, Convenience Trumps Free, As Few People Pirate Arrested Development

from the over-and-over-and-over-again dept

We've pointed out over and over and over again for years that for many people (certainly not all, but enough to make a huge difference) convenience trumps free when it comes to getting content. The latest example of this in action is the fact that way fewer people downloaded the new Arrested Development from unauthorized sources than other similarly hyped TV shows. As you probably know, the new Arrested Development was released via Netflix, rather than TV, and all episodes were immediately available. Unlike other TV shows that are tied to cable and hardly available online at all, Arrested Development was easy to watch online for those who had a Netflix account (which also doesn't require additional fees to watch the show if you already have a subscription).

So: it was available online, easy to watch, no marginal cost (if you had the subscription) and available on multiple platforms without limitation (i.e. no "you must watch within 24 hours").

The bizarre thing is that so many of the efforts by the entertainment industry seem to be designed to make things less convenient. They don't make it available online. They require you to have a cable account. They have added costs per episode or show. There are requirements about how long you have to watch it. And then they wonder why there's so much infringement?

If you offer a good product, that focuses on access and convenience, people are clearly willing to pay. This has been the lesson for well over a decade. It's amazing that it still needs to be repeated.

Filed Under: access, arrested development, convenience, copyright, infringement
Companies: netflix