Are 'Indiscreet' Images On Social Networks Really Having An Impact On Elections?

from the seems-blown-out-of-proportion dept

Back in 2006, we wondered what was going to happen when the generation that grew up with social networking started running for office. Would their youthful indiscretions -- now shared with thousands of friends -- come back to haunt them? Or would people just chalk them up to typical youthful indiscretions? I'm not quite sure we know the answer yet, but the NY Times has an article suggesting that we're already seeing the impact, naming a few different campaigns where various images and videos of less-than-flattering activities became a campaign issue. But here's the thing which the NY Times conveniently ignores: it appears that while some tried to make something out of these photos and videos, it's difficult to find any indication that it had any impact at all. Some of the candidates in the article won, and some lost. Those that lost, it appears, were likely to lose anyway. If anything, perhaps the article should have made the point that the American voter is (oh my goodness!) smart enough not to care all that much about someone doing something silly that's caught in a photograph.

Filed Under: elections, politics, social networks

$1,595 To Talk With The FCC About Telco Policy? Lobbyists Welcome; Average Citizens... Not So Much

from the how-policy-is-made dept

Michael Marcus is noting that the Practicing Law Institute is holding a Telco and Policy Regulation "Institute," that will include a Q&A with "FCC commissioners and other senior officials." It looks like three commissioners will be there, along with four other senior officials including the heads of "wireline competition," "wireless telecommunications," and "engineering and technology." The issue, Marcus points out, is that this Q&A with key regulators costs $1,595 to attend. Affordable for lobbyists, but not so much for anyone else.

But Marcus' bigger concern is that the public won't find out what was said at the event without ponying up for the recording -- where previous recordings cost $797 for audio and $1,595 for video. As he notes:

Now I do not disagree that it is useful for public officials to meet in fine hotels with industry moguls, brief them on upcoming policy issues and answer questions. The key question is whether the rest of us will find out in a reasonably timely what was said. (Some of us might like to ask questions also, but that is getting off subject.) I have previously proposed to the the FCC's reboot.fcc.gov site that asks about "What are ways in which the FCC can better engage the public in open proceedings?" that videos of such presentations be made available to the public at the normal FCC terms - free online, nominal charge for copying - within a few days of such an event. As with the other many suggestions received from the public via this site, this has not been resolved.

Again, it's understandable that it costs money to attend such events. It's costly to put them on, and events are a big business. But it gets a little troubling when public policy may be influenced at such events and the details of what was said are not revealed.

Filed Under: openness, politics, transparency
Companies: fcc

One Congressional Loss That Hurts: Rick Boucher

from the too-bad dept

I mentioned on Twitter yesterday that it was really sad how difficult it was to find any candidates I actually wanted to win in the election yesterday. In most cases, the more familiar I was with any candidate, the more I felt they didn't deserve to be elected (and that included both the leading candidates in many elections). There was one exception, however: I hoped that Rick Boucher would win re-election. There is a very, very small number of Congressional Representatives who actually seem to really get technology, telecom and copyright issues, and Boucher is was one of them. Despite easily winning re-election in many past elections (he didn't even have any real competitor last time around), it looks like Boucher has been swept out as part of the anti-incumbent sentiment. Trust me, I understand the desire to get rid of incumbent politicians, but Boucher was one of the rare politicians who actually seemed to get the issues that many of us find important.

This is bad news for copyright and for consumers. Not that he was all that successful in passing the laws that mattered on that subject, but he was one of the few who would ask the key questions, and actually try to fix those broken laws -- such as his repeated attempts to fix the DMCA and support fair use, as well as more recent attempts to stop the massive boondoggle that is the Universal Service Fund. Boucher was so respected on these issues, that even Public Knowledge's Gigi Sohn and ITIF's Richard Bennett agreed that this was bad news. I've known both Richard and Gigi for a while, and I can't recall them ever agreeing on anything. Gigi wrote up a blog post about what a loss this is for consumers and innovation. Hopefully we'll find out that one of the newly elected representatives actually understands some of these issues -- or perhaps some of the "survivors" will step up and recognize the issues. But Boucher's loss is bad news.

Filed Under: consumers, copyright, policy, politics, rick boucher, telecom

Many Of The Countries Negotiating ACTA In Secret Saw Their Corruption Perception Increase

from the if-the-perception-fits... dept

While there are certainly many other factors that go into such rankings, Jamie Love points us to the news that many of the countries negotiating ACTA in secret over the past few years have had their perceived corruption ratings increase. Transparency International famously puts out its Corruption Perceptions Index each year, highlighting how people view their own governments in terms of corruption. Again, obviously, there are many other factors that go into such ratings, but it does seem rather telling that so many of the countries that have very publicly hid behind bogus claims to avoid publicly discussing an agreement that will impact many people, are somehow viewed as more corrupt than in the past.

Now, I should note that Love says that 34 of the 37 participants had their corruption perception increase (the blog post claims only Morocco, Japan and Canada had better ratings), but that's not actually the case. First, I believe they missed Singapore, which also had a slightly better rating. Separately, 27 of the 37 countries are lumped together as "the EU," which apparently negotiated as a single entity. However, if you go through all 27 EU countries, it is worth noting that six of the 27 show slight improvements in their corruption perception, and another five stayed flat. Still, that does mean that 15 of the 27 EU countries did appear more corrupt. That said, since the EU negotiated as a single entity, it's a little tricky to judge how ACTA negotiations reflected on any individual country. For example, with a country like Malta, did anyone there really even care about ACTA? Separately, it's worth noting that many of the changes are small, and perhaps within the margin of error on such a rating system.

Either way, at the very least, it can be suggested that the majority of countries involved saw their ratings get worse -- and that's especially true of the countries that were heavily involved in the negotiations.

One quick note: it's a bit confusing but the Corruption Perception Index measures on a 0 to 10 scale, with 10 being "clean" and 0 being "highly corrupt." So, when I claim, above, that their "perceived corruption ratings increased," it means the score on the corruption scale declined. In other words, a decline in the Corruption Perception Index actually means an increase in perceived corruption (which suggests the index is misnamed somewhat...).

Filed Under: acta, corruption, politics

USPTO Not At All Happy About Justice Department Saying Genes Shouldn't Be Patentable

from the internal-rift dept

Last week, the Justice Department surprised a ton of people by filing an amicus brief saying that isolated genes should not be patentable. The NY Times has an article quoting a bunch of outraged patent attorneys, who are worried about their own jobs more than anything else, but also has some tidbits suggesting that the Patent and Trademark Office is not at all happy either, despite the fact that they're both part of the same administration. We noted in our original post that there must have been quite the political battle, and as will often happen, the losers appear to be griping. The USPTO has said that, even though the very same administration it's a part of says isolated genes shouldn't be patentable, it will continue to grant such patents until a court tells them not to (which, er, is what the district court did). The article also quotes a lawyer who spoke with USPTO director David Kappos, and noted that Kappos "seemed chagrined" at the situation. That seems like a polite way of saying that the USPTO is pissed off.

Filed Under: gene patents, patents, politics
Companies: justice department, uspto

Homeland Security Giving Extra Political Scrutiny To 'Activist' Groups FOIA Requests, Singles Out EFF

from the freedom-deserves-extra-scrutiny dept

When President Obama first came into office, one of the things he pledged was greater transparency, including in responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. As we've seen with things like ACTA, where the USTR refused FOIA requests with a totally bogus claim of "national security," the administration has regularly failed to live up to that promise and at times appears to be even worse than previous administrations. Over the last year, reports have come out that FOIA requests from certain groups and reporters are being singled out for political review. That's not the way the FOIA process is supposed to work, but apparently Homeland Security has alerted various FOIA officials that requests from certain groups need to first be sent up the chain for political review, both potentially delaying the release of the information, and subjecting it to reviews and possible redactions that go beyond what the law establishes. As the EFF notes, it seems to be among the groups singled out for special scrutiny, and the letter outlining this policy highlights three specific EFF FOIA requests. So, apparently the plan is "transparency, except when it might hurt us politically."

Filed Under: freedom of information, homeland security, politics

Democrats Are From Cablevision & Republicans Are From Fox In Retransmission Fee Dispute?

from the republicrats dept

One of the nice things about most tech issues is that they're not split down typical political party lines. In practice, tragically, that sometimes means that both of the major political parties side with rent-seeking interests, rather than the public good, but in other cases, it does mean that you can get actually cross-party discussion on the issues, rather than the talking points. However, it seems that whenever any particular issue gets "big enough," it suddenly has to break down on party lines. We saw it happen with net neutrality, but now it appears to be happening on the whole silly retransmission fight between cable companies and TV networks. As mentioned, these fights break out every few months, with both the networks and the cable companies blaming each other. In the end, consumers end up with higher prices either way. The whole fight itself is silly, but when TV stations get blocked during key sporting events (football, baseball playoffs), apparently Congress immediately sees an issue worth grandstanding over.

And, as Broadband Reports notes, at least in the case of Cablevision/Fox, it's become a partisan issue, with Democrats lining up behind Cablevision, introducing legislation that would bar broadcasters from pulling channels during negotiations. Meanwhile, Republicans are being lobbied heavily by News Corp to take its side. It could just be that it's because this is News Corp./Fox, which tends to support Republicans. So it will be interesting to see if similar battles involving other broadcasters split along similar lines...

Filed Under: cable, politics, retransmission, tv
Companies: cablevision, fox, news corp.

Bogus DMCA Takedown Knocks Out Yet Another Political Ad

from the politcal-speech dept

We were just discussing how the DMCA interferes with political speech, and the EFF brings up another example. Apparently, John Kasich, who's running for governor in Ohio, put out a commercial that purported to show a local steelworker talking about how unhappy he was with the current governor, Ted Strickland. Strickland's campaign folks apparently realized that the "steelworker" was really an actor, and put together the following video, mixing in clips of some of the actor's other work: The video was put up on YouTube... and then it was taken down via a DMCA notice. Now, it wasn't by Kasich's campaign. Instead, it was by Arginate Studios, one of the studios that had used the actor in a film. That particular clip is exceptionally brief in the ad. As the EFF notes, this is so blatantly a case of fair use as to be ridiculous. Beyond the fact that it's a tiny snippet, for political speech, used in a way that doesn't compete with the original movie (at all), apparently the film in question is already available for free online, as it was a part of a film festival, where the entries are viewable online.

What's troubling, yet again, is that this form of political speech has been removed from YouTube in the heat of an election battle. Even if the takedown was not political, it's clearly a case of copyright law being used to stifle political speech. The EFF asks Arginate to withdraw the takedown and asks YouTube to put the video back up (without waiting for the whole 10 to 14 day period in the DMCA).

Filed Under: dmca, john kasich, ohio, politics, speech, takedowns, ted strickland
Companies: arginate studios

The DMCA vs. Political Speech

from the shall-make-no-law dept

Transbot9 recently alerted us to the news that the NFL had complained about Senator Russ Feingold's use of an NFL clip in his latest TV commercial: Apparently Feingold folded like a cheap suit and quickly re-edited the commercial to heed the NFL's special interest. Ironically, the whole commercial is about Feingold's willingness to stand up to corporate special interests. Yeah. Nice one.

Anyway, the timing is good, on this. While it doesn't appear that any DMCA takedown was actually issued by the NFL against Feingold's commercial, we certainly have been hearing a lot of stories about DMCA takedowns on political commercials, where the content used is almost certainly fair use. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has just released a report looking at numerous DMCA takedowns of such political commercials, highlighting how in almost every case the use was almost certainly fair. The report reminds people that the whole DMCA takedown process -- especially in political contexts -- appears to be yet another example of how the DMCA violates the First Amendment with its takedown provisions.

Filed Under: dmca, free speech, politics

Once Again, Dead Content Creators Seem To Sign A Lot Of Pro-Stronger Copyright Petitions

from the funny-how-that-works dept

Four years ago, as the debate over copyright extension was going on in the UK, some people noticed that a petition from "artists" that was sent to the government had a bunch of signatures from artists who were dead. Apparently, they wanted copyright protection from beyond the grave. That worked so well in the UK, that it's apparently been expanded to all of Europe. We recently noted that the pro-stronger copyright Gallo Report was approved by the EU Parliament, but now some are noticing that the petitions in favor of it, once again, appear to have included at least one dead filmmaker. Separately, some noticed that the signatures appeared to include a disproportionate number of Hungarians, so Amelia Andersdotter decided to contact a few of the Hungarian filmmakers listed as having signed the document, and they told her they never signed any such thing. Other petitions show similar oddities, including content creators who have come out in favor of file sharing and those not even in the EU. From the looks of things, there's at least a pretty strong appearance of various industry groups simply signing the names of a long list of filmmakers and musicians to pad the listings...

Filed Under: copyright, gallo report, petitions, politics