Copyright Troll Malibu Media's 'Expert' Witness Appears To Be Totally And Completely Clueless

from the wtf? dept

We've written many times about Malibu Media, a massive copyright trolling operation that creates porn under the name X-Art and then shakes down people it claims are downloading it. There are tremendous similarities between Prenda Law and Malibu Media, but while Prenda Law has been buried under a series of rulings that it needs to pay up for abusing the judicial system to shake down people, Malibu Media has mostly been able to avoid such situations -- mostly by rapidly trying to get out of any case at the first sign of potential trouble. But, before that, it's been known to pull some pretty sketchy moves -- and sometimes gets weirdly aggressive in going after people who have a tremendous amount of evidence that they're innocent. While we've covered a few cases here and there, FightCopyrighttrolls.com has basically turned into a site reporting all things Malibu Media.

It's from those guys that I first caught wind of Malibu Media v. Jesse Raleigh based initially on a bizarre lashing out by Malibu Media's lawyer Jessica Fernandez (who works for Keith Lipscomb, the lawyer who appears to be the "John Steele" of the Malibu Media trolling operation) in the form of a Motion for Sanctions against Raleigh. The motion was oddly aggressive in arguing that Raleigh had misled Malibu Media in discovery and failed to produce certain items. The thing that caught my eye was specifically Malibu Media claiming that Raleigh had lied to them about not owning an "all-in-one computer." While searching through his Dropbox account photos they found some photos that they insisted proved that Raleigh did own an "all in one computer" that he had failed to produce during discovery: That specifically caught my attention, because I'm personally quite familiar with what the picture is showing and it's not an all-in-one computer. It's a portable USB computer monitor that you can plug into a laptop to have a second screen. I know this because I'm somewhat obsessed with portable external monitors, and for quite some time the AOC monitor was one of the few reasonably priced options in the market. But it's just a screen. It's not a computer at all. In fact, if anyone at Malibu Media had done even the slightest research (i.e., opening up AOC's website) they would have realized that AOC doesn't make computers. It only makes monitors.

That got me somewhat interested in other parts of the angry demand for sanctions, as the whole thing seemed to be filled with half-assed claims that made no sense at all. For example, it used another image in his Dropbox folder, combined with a tweet from over a year later, to argue that Raleigh had a server that he never turned over.
Yes, showing a backup server in 2013 and then a tweet in late 2014 (13 months later) is somehow proof that "the" server is his? Huh?

Anyway, it turns out that the "source" of many of these claims is a so-called "expert" who shows up in plenty of Malibu Media cases named Patrick Paige. Not surprisingly, both FightCopyrighttrolls.com and DieTrollDie.com have pages detailing some of his past shenanigans.

Now, as Raul alerts us, Raleigh is seeking to limit Paige's ability to testify as an expert in his case, on account of the fact that he doesn't appear to know what the fuck he's talking about in his "report" about Raleigh's activity. There are a bunch of examples in the 15 page document, including the simple fact that Raleigh was working in another city far away, to which he was in the process of moving, on most of the days he was accused of downloading works back at his previous home. There's also the fact that while Paige's report goes on and on about Raleigh having the uTorrent client on his computer, the original claims from Malibu Media insisted that the downloads were all done with a totally different client, qTorrent.

It also highlights the ridiculousness of the whole "he admitted he has a server he didn't send us" bit above:

Paige tries to associate a random photo taken by Defendant on November 8, 2013 with an unrelated tweet sent on December 27, 2014, then he applies some absolutely false information to reach a wholly fabricated conclusion. That is, the metadata associated with the photo in Paige Report... clearly establishes that it was taken at the Modustri offices located at 38 Commerce Avenue in Grand Rapids on November 8, 2013. The 1-terrabyte server backup associated with the icon in the photo belonged to Modustri. The tweet issued on December 27, 2014 (over a year later) had nothing to do with the picture, and was referencing files that were turned over to Paige.... Moreover, Paige's assertions in... his Report is simply false-- the testimony and evidence is very clear... that Defendant stopped working at Silversmith, Inc. in early January 2013. Hence, Paige's erroneous presumption that the November 8, 2013 picture was taken while Defendant worked at Silversmith is just that -- erroneous. Again, all of the "red flags" apply here.

There's also a bit about the AOC monitor:

At the right side of the photo is an AOC monitor that Defendant still owns and Malibu is free to examine.... Paige, however, apparently envisioned that the monitor could have been an AOC all-in-one computer. From the notion that this was a possibility, he then concluded that it was an all-in-one computer. From that erroneous conclusion, he further concluded that Defendant was hiding computer devices. Clearly, this is the kind of speculation that the Supreme Court decided should not be erroneously clothed with the imprimatur of reliable by coming from an "expert."

Raleigh's lawyers leave out the fact that AOC doesn't even make computers. But if Paige is such an "expert" you'd think he'd be able to suss out that bit of info. Raleigh's lawyers point out that this is part of a pattern in which Paige is no expert at all, but rather just trying to manufacture anything that says Raleigh is guilty, often through accusations and guesswork:

It is clear from the nature of most of the opinions in the Paige Report that his conclusions are not actually deducible from his premises (and not even accounting for the falsity of many of his premises). This is somewhat understandable when one considers that his Report is the product of inductive logic rather than deductive logic. That is, if one starts with the assumption that Defendant is the infringer (as Paige has obviously done here), and then works backward to extrapolate the premises, one reproduces Paige's results. For example: (1) Paige assumes Defendant is the infringer; (2) Paige finds no evidence supporting that assumption on Defendant's computers and file storage devices; so (3) Paige concludes that Defendant withheld computer devices, hid evidence or lied. The problem with that type of reasoning is that the initial premise (which is actually the conclusion) is not supported by the syllogism.

The filing also notes a rather startling omission from Paige's so-called "expert" report: the fact that he was unable to find any evidence whatsoever of the claimed infringing files on Raleigh's hard drives. That seems like an important point... but as Raleigh's lawyers point out, it appears to be par for the course for the supposed "expert" Paige. In a similar case nearby a few months back, a court had to actually order Paige to supplement his "expert report" with the answer to the question of whether or not the copyright material Malibu Media was suing over was found on the examined hard drives. In response, Paige never made the necessary additions. Instead, as Raul points out, Malibu Media turned tail and ran, filing to dismiss the case.

When the whole Prenda thing went down, we were somewhat surprised at how long it took for courts to actually put an end to it. And while multiple courts have called out Malibu Media's bad copyright trolling behavior, it still hasn't faced a real reckoning, a la Prenda. Instead, it seems able to slip out of basically any of the cases where it runs into serious challenges. Given that, don't be surprised to see Malibu Media suddenly have a change of heart in the Raleigh case as well.

Still, it would be nice to see Malibu Media and its lawyer Keith Lipscomb finally face some sort of consequences for what appears to be a clear abuse of copyright law and the judicial system to squeeze cash out of gullible individuals.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright troll, copyright trolling, expert, harassment, jesse raleigh, patrick paige
Companies: malibu media, x-art

Judge In Free Speech Case Over Twitter Fight Apparently Fooled By Parody Account

from the ouch dept

We just reported on a good ruling in Canada that threw out a criminal (yes, criminal) harassment case over what appeared to be a somewhat ridiculous Twitter spat. As we noted, basically no one came out of the spat looking particularly good, but to argue that such a spat should be criminal seemed ridiculous no matter how you looked at it. In the ruling, the judge did find that the tweets sent by Greg Elliott were harassing, but that it wasn't criminal because of the circumstances, including the fact that it was a public discussion and many of the tweets involved Elliott trying (perhaps aggressively) to defend himself against attacks against himself. However, as the very first commenter on our post pointed out, and which other reporters have now reported as well, at least one of the tweets that the judge pointed to as an example of Elliott's aggressive language actually came from a parody account.

The tweet in question came from the @greg_a_eliott account, which is ever so slightly from Greg Elliott's real account, which spells his name (as it is spelled) with two "Ls" instead of just one: @greg_a_elliott. But apparently the judge missed that and assumed the following homophobic tweet was from Elliott: The judge specifically cites that tweet in the ruling, and four separate times notes that at least one of Elliott's tweets were homophobic:

His language is vulgar and sometimes obscene, and once inexplicably homophobic...

It didn't really have an impact on the case, as the judge still tossed out the charges, but it does still seem at least mildly problematic, as the judge clearly regularly referenced that tweet, even though admitting that it wasn't in the evidence that was submitted, but which he found on his own. The judge went through a somewhat long explanation, noting that he found the tweet on his own and was at least somewhat confused why it had not been entered into evidence originally, suggesting that the search tool used by the police, called Sysomos, did a bad job.

Again, in this case, it didn't really matter, but this may be something to watch out for in future cases, where such mistakes could have a huge impact.

Filed Under: canada, criminal harassment, free speech, greg elliott, harassment, parody account, twitter fight

Judge Tosses Out Criminal Case In Canada Over Twitter Fight

from the good-move dept

Last summer, we wrote about a troubling criminal case up in Canada, exploring whether or not a Twitter fight constituted criminal harassment. The details are long and complex and I tried to summarize them in the last post so if you want more details go there. However, the super short version was as follows:

1. Angry person (not involved in lawsuit) creates a stupid, immature video game that allows users to punch another person (focused on someone who is controversial in certain circles).
2. Some people who are angry about this game, convene other people online to speak out against the game, and to try to shame the developer (to the point of trying to block employment opportunities).
3. Another person challenges the reasonableness of the attack in part 2, suggesting that the campaign goes too far.

That's the short version of it. Again, there's a lot more involved, but suffice it to say that two of the people who were involved in part (2) above, Stephanie Guthrie and Heather Reilly, felt that the guy who was behind part 3, Greg Elliott, went too far in his tweets in condemning their actions. As we noted none of the tweets appeared to involve actual threats -- just heated rhetoric, which is not uncommon in Twitter debates.

Thankfully, in a fairly long and detailed ruling, the court ended up dismissing all of the charges. It's not, as some might loosely believe, a clear pass to allow harassment online in Canada, but pretty specific to the circumstances of this particular case. The judge first reflected on the nature of Twitter and free speech, including the use of hashtags, which was a central part of the issue raised in the case. A key point: that Twitter is a public forum, rather than a targeted one. And while you can do direct person-to-person communication, that's not it's main function. And it would be somewhat tricky to argue that people talking in a public forum are directly targeting someone just by using a hashtag they might follow.

Once someone creates a hashtag, anyone can use it. Everyone has to be able to use it freely; anything less will limit the operation of Twitter in a way that is not consistent with freedom of expression.

On the other hand, someone may want to participate in a discussion anchored by a hashtag but not want to communicate with a particular person. Of many possible reasons for this, one may be that the person to be excluded does not want to hear from the other or has even told the other to stop contacting them. To interpret using a hashtag that you know another person also has used, may use, is using for an event, or even created (by using it first) as communicating indirectly with that person would prevent legitimate use of the hashtag. No one could use the hashtag without checking that anyone who did not want to hear from them was not using or following it, or might use or follow it.

The judge then did suggest that the two women did legitimately feel harassed by the tweets -- but that alone isn't enough. They also need to show that Greg Elliott knew that the women were "being harassed," that his tweets caused them to be fearful for their safety, and that the fear was reasonable. And that's where the case falls down. Again, no one denies that he said some mean or crass things, but none of the things he said apparently tipped the scales far enough to suggest that he "knew" that what he was tweeting was harassing them or making them fear for their safety.

Given Ms. Guthrie’s view, Mr. Elliott would have had to know it in order to know that she was harassed. Knowledge, as discussed above, is really knowing. But that he knew that he was harassing her is not the only reasonable inference, based on the evidence that at the time, he was observing her constant involvement with him: participating in the mocking of him, unblocking to communicate with him, telling others he was a men’s rights activist harassing women online, saying his name and celebrating the “Ugh” at the mention of his name at the meeting.

This very context and history, which the prosecution relies on to show that Ms. Guthrie was harassed, raises doubt as to whether Mr. Elliott knew she was harassed. This is quite apart from the campaigns against Mr. Elliott that were hatched at the summer meeting, and the Twitter discussions among Ms. Guthrie and her followers about his alleged harassment of women.

The court also noted that many of the tweets that were called harassing were Elliott (perhaps over-aggressively) trying to defend himself from claims made by others:

All of Mr. Elliott’s tweets at issue were responses to the attacks on him that I have listed, or a return to the original dinner and the Bendilin Spurr dispute. I say “all” his tweets because Crown counsel does not rely on the content of any one tweet to suggest harassment. His not letting go of a topic is stubborn and may be considered childish, but it does not provide a basis for a recipient of his tweets to fear danger, especially if the recipient is herself still making negative comments about the sender.

Another premise of Ms. Guthrie’s is that Mr. Elliott was not allowed to tweet using hashtags that she created, was closely associated with or followed. But he was. She held a view of hashtags and Twitter that is she is entitled to but, according to this evidence, is not reasonable.

The court notes that the result might have been different "had there been anything in the tweets of a violent or sexual nature" but that after reviewing all the tweets the judge "found no such tweet."

The court looked separately at the case of Heather Reilly, and again found that she was "harassed" based on the tweets sent her way, but that the circumstances were not reasonable -- in that Reilly basically demanded that Elliott not refer to or look at her public communications:

On this evidentiary record, asking a person to stop reading one’s feed from a freely chosen open account is not reasonable. Nor is it reasonable to ask someone to stop alluding to one’s tweets. To subscribe to Twitter and keep your account open is to waive your right to privacy in your tweets. Arranging a meeting or social event using tweets other than direct messages is like inviting strangers into your home or onto your phone line while you talk to your friends. Blocking only goes so far, as long as you choose to remain open.

On the whole, it's a good result. Again, as we explained originally, the whole case seemed like a mess involving a lot of people doing really crappy things online, and then getting angry at others. However, nearly all of it involved protected expression and protected counter speech. It may have been ugly (on basically all sides by basically everyone involved), but none of that makes it illegal.

Filed Under: canada, criminal harassment, free speech, greg allen, harassment, heather reilly, offensive, stephanie guthrie, twitter fight
Companies: twitter

Eric Schmidt Suggests Building A 'Spell Checker' For Online Harassment And Other Bad Things Online

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Google's executive chairperson Eric Schmidt has an opinion piece in the NY Times, in which he advocates partly for an internet that is more widely available and enabling greater freedom of expression... but also one where there are "spell-checker" like tools to identify bad stuff online like harassment and ISIS videos:

Authoritarian governments tell their citizens that censorship is necessary for stability. It’s our responsibility to demonstrate that stability and free expression go hand in hand. We should make it ever easier to see the news from another country’s point of view, and understand the global consciousness free from filter or bias. We should build tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media — sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment. We should target social accounts for terrorist groups like the Islamic State, and remove videos before they spread, or help those countering terrorist messages to find their voice. Without this type of leadership from government, from citizens, from tech companies, the Internet could become a vehicle for further disaggregation of poorly built societies, and the empowerment of the wrong people, and the wrong voices.

This is one of those "sounds good when you say it, but what does it really mean" kind of statements. In some ways, you could argue that his statement is almost self-contradictory. We should make it easier to see news and information from another country's point of view... unless that point of view is one we've declared to be terrorists. As easy as it is to agree with that general sentiment -- I'd prefer a world without ISIS and other terrorist groups, certainly -- it leaves open the possibility for widespread abuse. Don't like a particular group or country? Just declare them terrorists, and *shooop* down they go through the internet memory hole.

And this is the problem with these kinds of feel good suggestions. So much is dependent on the idea that there is some objective standard for "good" content that is okay that we should all share and "bad" content that is evil and should be taken down. Where you draw that line can be quite different for nearly everyone, and if you're in a position of serious power, drawing that line can result in dangerous abuses of power.

That's why I still think a much better solution is to separate out the layers a bit. A few months ago, I talked about the importance of protocols instead of platforms. Separate out the content from the platforms, and then let many others create tools that can filter that content in different ways. Then each individual can decide for themselves which tools they want to use to create their own internet experience. Someone could create that kind of "anti-harassment/anti-terrorist" filter tool, and people who want to use it are free to do so, but it doesn't impact the experience of others. Where things get tricky is -- as the internet gets more centralized, the platforms are also in charge of the filters. When that happens there are inevitable mistakes and abuses, leading to censorship and voices being silenced.

Filed Under: eric schmidt, filters, free speech, harassment, spell checker
Companies: google

Advocacy Groups, Lawyers Want Dept. Of Education To Enforce Campus Yik Yak Bans, Encourage First Amendment Violations

from the 'legal-experts' dept

Here comes another attack on free speech, using college campuses as the delivery vehicle.

A large group of 72 women’s and civil rights groups have asked for the Department of Education’s help in protecting students and faculty from abusive speech and threats made on university campuses via the Yik Yak app. In a letter published this week, the organizations seek a formal "guidance" to colleges from the Department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and hope to specifically put such online threats under the umbrella of federal gender and racial equality legislation.

The group wants universities to ban use of Yik Yak and other anonymous social media platforms. The angle they're taking involves federal statutes (Title VI and Title IX) that forbid universities from engaging in racial or sexual discrimination. Universities have often interpreted this code to mean that they're obligated to prevent students from harassing each other while on campus. While there is some obligation inherent in these statutes, it does not go as far as to compel schools to regulate off-campus actions, which some of these communications are.

Unfortunately, the Department of Education has muddied the legal waters in regards to these statutes, which has led many colleges to believe their federal funding could be threatened if they don't immediately overreact to every harassment allegation. It's only because of this muddying that these groups have any leverage whatsoever.

These groups want campuses to actively regulate off-campus speech and they're using Yik Yak as their test case. Yik Yak has received lots of bad press for posts made on its platform. Yik Yak doesn't compose the posts or perform any sort of curation. But to these groups -- as well as plenty of misguided school administrators -- Yik Yak is the problem, rather than the racists and sexists who use it.

Because the app gives users anonymity, the most visible target is the app itself. And because many people want speech they don't like to be buried, all sorts of stupid things are being said by people who should know better -- namely, actual practicing lawyers.

The Department of Education last issued such guidance in 2010, prior to the birth of Yik Yak and other similar apps. "Harassing conduct may take many forms, including verbal acts and name-calling; graphic and written statements, which may include use of cell phones or the Internet; or other conduct that may be physically threatening, harmful, or humiliating," the Department of Education stated.

"Some universities have taken the position have that this isn't on campus, so we don't have to deal with it," said Alison Asarnow, an attorney who specializes in sexual harassment cases. "We need to impress on colleges and universities that yes, this is your responsibility; that's what we meant."

Note that Asarnow deigns to speak for the Department of Education, an entity she does not represent nor is employed by. She has determined on her own that the statutes, along with the DOE's guidance, means something it doesn't actually say. The guidance instructs universities to be proactive when it comes to "hostile environments" created by harassment, but it does not instruct schools to punish speech or regulate off-campus activities. If universities buy into this mindset (and many have), they'll be spending their federal funding on defending themselves against First Amendment lawsuits. Schools can't regulate off-campus speech and are under no legal obligation to do so, no matter what this attorney thinks.

But that's not the only clueless statement being uttered by a practicing attorney. Over at Simple Justice, Scott Greenfield quotes Debra S. Katz, another lawyer involved in the fight to bring down Yik Yak -- one that has already duped the DOE into investigating a university for "failing to investigate online harassment" via the app.

At Wednesday’s news conference, Ms. Katz said she hoped to persuade Yik Yak to be more forthcoming in revealing the identities of users who harass online, and to stop refusing to hand over users’ names to people outside law enforcement unless ordered to do so by a court.

If you can get Yik Yak to do you favors, great. But don't pretend the platform has any sort of obligation to do so. It's incredibly stupid for Katz to complain that Yik Yak will only hand over personally-identifiable information in response to the correct legal paperwork. That's how things are supposed to work. It's not a sign the system has failed. It's the system working the way it should. No social media platform should be handing out user info to whoever asks for it. This information should only be given to authorities providing court orders or warrants. It boggles the mind that a lawyer would believe it should be otherwise.

Katz isn't done, though.

Observing that the company has been quick to provide information identifying people who have threatened criminal acts such as shootings, she said it should also feel obliged to identify the violators of federal laws barring educational institutions from discriminating based on sex or race.

This is even stupider than the first half of her statement. The people making these stupid racist/sexist statements aren't violating federal law, not even if they attend universities that fall under these statutes. If the comments move toward stalking or harassment, the legal system provides remedies for victims. These remedies generate the paperwork needed to obtain user info from Yik Yak. Again, this is how the system is supposed to work. Yik Yak is not "obliged" to identify anyone without a warrant or court order. Katz wants Yik Yak to start coughing up information whenever a university -- or one of its students -- demands it, when neither Yik Yak nor the university are obligated by federal law to take any action whatsoever.

What these groups want the DOE to do is step in and force schools to participate in violating students' First Amendment rights. Of course, these legitimate First Amendment concerns are portrayed by the advocacy groups as spurious at best.

Many schools have shirked these legal obligations by citing vague First Amendment concerns. At the University of Mary Washington, for example, administrators and lawyers for the University repeatedly stated that, as a public university, they were bound by the First Amendment to permit threatening posts on Yik Yak and could not disable the application. The school’s Title IX coordinator also sent an email to students informing them that the university has “no recourse for such cyber bullying” and instructed students to file a report with Yik Yak if they became the subject of threatening or abusive comments on the social media application.

[...]

Likewise, administrators at Clemson University and Kenyon College refused to ban Yik Yak out of fear it would infringe on students’ freedom of speech.

[...]

Nonetheless, academic institutions, many mistakenly citing the First Amendment, have not been quick to take action to properly investigate anonymous online harassment and cyber-violence. Many schools have taken the stance that they have no recourse for students experiencing harassment on these sites. Students are therefore left to fend for themselves against vicious threats and harassment simply because it is conducted on a new platform.

The groups shrug off valid First Amendment concerns and follow it up by accusing schools who present harassed students with valid options (report harassers to the social media platform and/or local authorities) as somehow shirking their obligations to their students.

What these groups are demanding is a new reality where social media platforms kick loose identifiable information to whoever asks for it, for whatever reason, with the federal government's blessing. They don't seem to know how to make Yik Yak compliant with their wishes (other than taking every opportunity to portray it as a blight on humanity) but they do know how to motivate the schools. First, they threaten the carrot (federal funding tied to Title IV/IX compliance). Then they grab the stick.

Ms. Katz said she hoped the Office for Civil Rights would issue strong new guidance requiring colleges to stem online harassment “because schools, quite frankly, are very scared of lawsuits.”

Unfortunately for Katz and others who think like her, that stick can also be wielded by offending Yik Yak users, who may start filing lawsuits of their own if federally-funded schools get into the business of regulating off-campus speech.

Filed Under: anonymous speech, civil rights, colleges, free speech, harassment, title ix, title vi
Companies: yik yak

UN Broadband Commission Releases Questionable Report On 'Cyber Violence' Against Women

from the wherein-the-problem's-solutions-are-problems-themselves dept

The UN's Broadband Commission has just released a report on "Cyber Violence Against Women and Girls." That this has been put together by the Broadband Commission rather than something more directly related to either law enforcement or human rights should be the first warning flag. This indicates the UN feels the responsibility for "cyber violence" should be borne by ISPs and social media platforms, rather than those actually committing the acts detailed in the report.

Ken White at Popehat has written a long and thoughtful piece on the report that's well worth reading, even with his admission that he may cut the authors of the document too much slack. White discusses what's wrong with the Commission's aims, using the presupposition that its assertions about "cyber violence" towards women are true. Even granting the Commission this generous benefit of a doubt, there's still a lot that's worrying about the Commission's proposals and assumptions.

Perhaps the biggest concern is that the UN is behind it. While the concept of the United Nations is noble, the execution has been an ongoing disaster. The governing body has been far too willing to humor the whims and predilections of countries whose track records on speech and human rights are generally abysmal. This is the unavoidable outcome of "uniting" disparate nations. Because there's no way to please everyone, the UN has settled for a grade school-esque "everybody gets a turn" fairness. That leads directly to this sort of thing:

I don't trust the UN on free speech issues. You shouldn't either. In a world where Iran wins a seat on the UN's Commission on the Status of Women, people who care about women's rights should also be skeptical. Pro-censorship forces continually pressure the UN for international laws and norms restricting speech — for instance by demanding laws outlawing blasphemy. Allow me some unabashed American exceptionalism: that's a bad thing. The United States' vigorous approach to protecting free speech and rejecting blasphemy laws is good, and foreign norms that encourage blasphemy laws often used to persecute religious and ethnic minorities are bad.

No one should want the UN to take up this battle. Those looking to see free speech respected won't find much to like about the UN's involvement. Countries where actual violence is routinely perpetrated against women, along with cultural oppression, won't be talked into a national change of heart just because the UN has decided to shelter women from online violence. ISPs aren't going to be receptive to additional directives that require them to more heavily police their users, especially when the targeted content isn't as easy to recognize and curtail as the report makes it appear.

The Commission's report also ignores the obvious in its desire to right the internet's wrongs: laws are already in place to deal with much of the "cyber violence" the commission aims to prevent. The report lists six areas where women are subjected to "cyber violence," almost all of which are already addressed by criminal and civil statutes.

Hacking
Impersonation
Surveillance/Tracking (i.e., stalking)
Harassment/Spamming
Recruitment (sex trafficking)
Malicious Distribution (defamation, revenge porn, etc.)

This isn't to say that legal systems already in place are handling the digital version of these criminal and civil violations perfectly. They aren't. We only need to look at sexting prosecutions to get a general idea of how badly this goes when laws written to serve a different purpose are stretched to address unforeseen modes of behavior.

But the solution isn't the construction of an entirely new legal framework, especially not one built on the assumption that "cyber violence" is equivalent to physical violence. We've similarly seen the disastrous results of laws written solely to address new issues like cyberbullying and revenge porn. The former tends to replace actual harm and malicious intent with highly-subjective measurements. The latter tends to criminalize acts that aren't revenge porn, thanks to sloppy wording and legislative grandstanding.

There may be some measured steps that could be taken to mitigate the problems the Commission is targeting, but the wording contained in the report strongly suggests a measured approach isn't what the Commission has in mind.

[R]hetorically, the report advocates a "zero tolerance for violence against women" mantra. I understand and share the anti-violence sentiment, but experience teaches that framing a response to a problem as "zero tolerance" leads to terrible results. That's not a problem with "women's issues," it's a problem with any perceived social ill. Telling people to take a "zero tolerance" approach effectively tells them to suspend critical judgment when addressing a problem. It doesn't lead to treating a problem seriously; it leads to treating a problem anxiously. When applied to something as complicated as the internet, that's potentially disastrous.

The report suggests "partnerships" between private industry and governing bodies, something that never works out well. The Commission hesitates to advocate government censorship, but does so disingenuously by suggesting that "voluntary" measures enacted under pressure from multiple governments are actually still voluntary. And it completely ignores the fact that any such systems put into place will be gamed immediately by the people they're meant to target, along with any number of trolls that game systems simply to game systems.

It also attempts to shoehorn in the unproven claim that video game violence leads to actual violence and does so citing perhaps the worst "source" available -- an article that leads off by quoting Lyndon Larouche uncritically.

It is the “New Violence,” as Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche was the first to precisely characterize it at the time. It is the use of Nintendo-style games, and related means, to transform young children and adolescents, as well as law-enforcement personnel into “Samurai”-style programmed killers.

That's not the quote that makes it into the report. What it does quote is almost innocuous compared to the content surrounding it.

There is widespread representation of VAWG in mainstream culture, including in contemporary and popular music, movies, the gaming industry and the general portrayal of women in popular media. Recent research on how violent video games are turning children, mostly boys, into ‘killing zombies’ are also a part of mainstreaming violence. And while the presentation and analysis of this research is beyond the scope of this paper, the links to the core roots of the problem are very much in evidence and cannot be overlooked.

To call this alarmist screed "research" is beyond laughable. Even if you can somehow accept the assertion that violent video games are crafting a generation of "killing zombies," you're left with with the author's other assertions, which veer off into inadvertent satire.

Nintendo of America, Inc.: Manufactures Pokémon, Game-Boys, and equipment for satanic video games.

[...]

Hasbro Interactive: Official U.S. distributor of Pokémon (abbreviation for “Pocket Monsters”), the killing game designed for toddlers beginning at 2 and 3 years old; Dungeons and Dragons, the medieval satanic and magic fantasy game; Risk II, a “ruthless quest for world domination".

The report also quotes a report on harassment of Indian women via WhatsApp (with cited URL actually being a file path on some UN's employees C: drive). The report itself notes that the study was severely limited and that "no sweeping generalizations should be made." The Broadband Commission apparently failed to read that part of the report.

The use of WhatsApp instant messaging, for example, has become, according to some reports, the latest harassment tool of choice in countries like India and Malaysia, and increasingly around the world.

Diving into every citation would likely uncover more problems in the assumptions drawn by the Broadband Council. (For instance, the Pew report quoted in the paper conveniently ignores the research center's finding that men experience online harassment more often than women, although they are less likely to be sexually harassed or stalked.) Even if the sources were impeccable, the Commission's ultimate goals would still be questionable.

A governing body that grants far too much deference to countries that abuse their own population thinks it can clean up the internet. There are few direct attacks on free speech in the report, but that's probably more due to the UN's restricted definition of free speech ("Freedoms of expression should be and must be guaranteed and protected, when they are used for common justice, common purpose…") than the Commission's concerns about undue limits on expression.

Even if you firmly agree with the report's assertion that "cyber violence" disproportionately affects women and that new measures need to be put in place to rein this in, you can't -- in good conscience -- applaud the UN's involvement. This is a governing body that routinely turns a blind eye to physical violence targeting women and allows countries with atrocious human rights records to guide policy decisions. This sort of issue cannot be solved with blanket directives issued by a governing body that is routinely ignored by its member states and whose deference to even the worst "stakeholders" continually undercuts the ideals it claims to promote.

UPDATE: Ken White has written a follow-up piece stating that he was wrong to cut the UN Broadband Commission's report as much slack as he did the first time around.

First off, he points out how dangerous this could be, considering it's the Broadband Commission that's behind this report. As he notes, there are several authoritarian regimes fighting for more control of the internet -- which of course means more control of their citizens. A set of internet rules handed down by the UN will be leveraged against their weakest citizens and misused to shut down dissent, no matter how noble the original goal.

He also points out that the quote pulled from the Lyndon Larouche-touting anti-videogame screed almost singlehandedly undercuts the credibility of the entire report. It's just that bad.

This is the equivalent of submitting a serious proposal to Congress advocating for changes in the federal budget and, for the proposition that the NASA budget should be reduced, linking to sites that claim that the moon landing was faked.

Some may point out it's a single citation, from which only a few words were pulled. But this seems to indicate there are other media forms the UN would like to control.

One bad citation wouldn't normally destroy the credibility of an entire report. If any one can, this one does. It's used to support a drop-in that violent movies and video games are something the UN might want to look at. It is so freakishly inappropriate that I can only imagine four scenarios: (1) there are no sensible people involved in the preparation and approval of the report, (2) any sensible people involved with the report did not read the report any more carefully than I did, (3) the people behind the report believe this Jack Thompson/Tipper Gore/Jack Chick malarkey, or (4) the people behind the report don't particularly care about the reliability of the sources for their pronouncements.

White also spends more time discussing the Commission's problematic definition of "cyber violence," which seems to be about evenly split between things that aren't actual violence and things that are already criminal acts in most countries. This is where the report is the most dangerous. It's attempting to leverage vague wording and foregone conclusions to grant the UN increased speech-policing powers -- an idea no one should be in a hurry to support.

Filed Under: broadband, cyberviolence, free speech, harassment, un, vawg

Workplace Commission In Australia: Unfriending A Co-Worker Is A Factor In Bullying Case

from the dislike dept

Workplace rules: who can understand them, am I right? I mean, they give me a computer at work and I'm not supposed to use it to find the most hilarious NSFW pictures possible? They give me co-workers but I'm not allowed to question them about exactly where they fit into the Illuminati conspiracy that may or may not be going on and why are you running away? My workplace encourages me to use social media in a responsible way, but I'm not allowed to unfriend people I don't get along with?

No, no I'm not. At least, if I worked in Australia I wouldn't be allowed to, according to the Australian government's Fair Work Commission, which recently claimed that de-friending a co-worker is a form of emotional immaturity in the workplace.

Rachael Roberts, a Launceston real estate agent, complained to the commission that she was bullied by her colleague Lisa Bird, leaving her with depression and anxiety. The Facebook incident took place in January this year, after Ms Bird allegedly called Ms Roberts a "naughty little schoolgirl running to the teacher" during an aggressive meeting in the tea room.

Ms Roberts told the commission she left the office crying and when she later checked Facebook to see if Ms Bird has commented on Facebook about the incident, she found that Ms Bird had deleted her as a Facebook friend. Fair Work Commission deputy president Nicole Wells said in her decision that the unfriending was unreasonable behaviour and that Ms Roberts had been bullied at work.

Can you hear that commotion off in the distance? That's a hundred-million workplace trolls throughout the world rejoicing as though it were troll-Christmas, because a ruling like this is not only nonsensical, but it's also a mandate that the trolled must continue to be trolled in the form of Facebook. Yes, upon review of the incidents that Roberts complained about, the ruling seems to indicate that Bird, whatever her feelings and interactions with Roberts might be, must continue to have her digital space invaded against her will. Even if Roberts is correct that Bird has acted like something of a jerk, and judging from the commission's other findings that seems to be the case, what business is it of government to mandate who a Facebook user must or must not continue to connect with both in and out of the workplace? Put more succinctly: what the ever-loving hell is going on here?

Well, here to provide a non-explanation is a lawyer who is about to not make sense.

Josh Bornstein, from Maurice Blackburn lawyers, argues the Facebook unfriending is bullying but only because it happened in the context of several other incidents.

"The Fair Work Commission didn't find that unfriending someone on Facebook constitutes workplace bullying," he said. "What the Fair Work Commission did find is that a pattern of unreasonable behaviour, hostile behaviour, belittling behaviour over about a two-year period, which featured a range of different behaviours including berating, excluding and so on, constituted a workplace bullying.

I love this kind of argument. Acting hostile towards the victim? That's bullying. Belittling them? That's a-bullying, too. Berating them and otherwise interacting with them in a negative way? Bullying. Cutting all of that off by ceasing communication with the person? Well screw you because that's bullying, too. I do believe this is the first time I've ever heard an argument for any kind of harrassment stemming from non-communication between two parties. The commission went so far as to decide that Mrs. Bird's defriending was emotional immaturity on the part of Mrs. Bird, and saying so in the context of discussing Mrs. Bird being a bully.

[89] The evidence of Ms Roberts as to Mrs Bird defriending her on Facebook immediately after the incident is supported by a contemporaneous text message between Ms Roberts and Mr Bird. 64 It was not refute by Mrs Bird in evidence. This action by Mrs Bird evinces a lack of emotional maturity and is indicative of unreasonable behaviour, the likes of which I have already made findings on. The ‘school girl’ comment, even accepting of Mrs Bird’s version of events, which I am not, is evidence of an inappropriate dealing with Ms Roberts which was provocative and disobliging. I am of the view that Mrs Bird took the first opportunity to draw a line under the relationship with Ms Roberts on 29 January 2015, when she removed her as a friend on Facebook as she did not like Ms Roberts and would prefer not to have to deal with her. I am satisfied that the evidence of Ms Roberts, as to the incident on 29 January 2015, is to be preferred and that the allegation of unreasonable behaviour by Mrs Bird in Allegation 17 is made out.

Experts about bullying appear to agree that this is an overreach by the commission.

Bullying expert Oscar Yildiz said the Fair Work Commission has set a dangerous precedent, and Ms Bird's actions on social media did not constitute a personal attack.

"In this case, what is the future threat? That this person has unfriended someone on Facebook? Well, big deal," Mr Yildiz said. "As far as I'm concerned that doesn't constitute bullying and it shouldn't. If it does, what the commission has done here is set precedent."

Of course it doesn't. If anyone in any part of their lives has a negative interaction with a person, it's a perfectly natural thing to un-friend them from social media. Hell, thousands of personal relationships take this course every single day. Government stepping in to decide who a person may or may not keep in their social media circles is an overreach of astounding proportions.

Filed Under: australia, bullying, harassment, unfriending
Companies: facebook

Canadian Court Ponders If A Disagreement On Twitter Constitutes Criminal Harassment

from the yikes dept

Free speech debates can often get tiresome online (for fairly obvious reasons), but it continues to astound me how people seem to think that there should be some sort of obvious exception to free speech rights for speech they don't like -- and that there won't be any unintended or dangerous consequences from simply outlawing the speech that they dislike. To me, that belief is dangerous, though obviously people should be allowed to make their arguments for it. Up in Canada -- where they don't have a First Amendment like we do here in the states -- there's a fascinating and very troubling case happening that shows the dangerous path that you go down when you start saying things like "offensive speech" should be illegal. The determination of "offensive" is incredibly subjective.

The case here appears to be over a Twitter spat between a few individuals, who clearly don't much like each other. That said, the spat appears to be not dissimilar from the many, many Twitter spats that happen each and every day. I'm pretty sure I've had Twitter debates as bad, if not worse, than what happened here, and the idea that such a debate could lead to possible criminal charges and jail time is fundamentally crazy.

And the deeper you dig into the details, the more and more bizarre the case itself gets.

There are three main players: Greg Elliott, who is facing the harassment charges. Then there's Stephanie Guthrie and Heather Reilly, who both brought the charges (with a third woman who is no longer involved). The story started in 2012 when someone else entirely, Bendilin Spurr, created a ridiculous distasteful game that allowed players to punch out a well-known woman (who I'm not even going to bother naming here, because, honestly, the mere mention of this person's name automatically makes comments divide into angry warring factions where reasoned debate disappears -- and I ask folks, before commenting, to think carefully about if it's worth going down that ridiculous rabbit hole -- on any side). Given that parenthetical notation I just had to make, not surprisingly, some people got quite upset about this very stupid game. Among the people angry about the game was Guthrie, who apparently went on Twitter and got people riled up about all of this:

Guthrie testified earlier at this trial, which has been on and off since January, that she asked the Twittersphere what to do.

“Should I sic the Internet on him?” she asked, and it was almost rhetorical, so swift and predictable was the resounding reply.

So she Tweeted “to prospective Sault Ste. Marie employers” and the local newspaper a link to a story about the game, asked Spurr “Do you punch women in the face IRL (in real life) or just on the Internet?” and asked her Twitter followers to retweet the whole shebang.

Some people supported Guthrie, others did not and responded angrily, including threats of bodily harm and all sorts of other crazy vitriol. Because internet. And immaturity. From the sound of it, many of the responses to Guthrie were, indeed, horrifying and disturbing.

Now that brings us to Greg Elliott. He knew Guthrie a bit (and not just online), and he disagreed with Guthrie's apparent plan to shame Spurr, and so he created what appears to have been something of a counter campaign to speak out against Guthrie's campaign.

Elliott’s contribution to this dialogue was to remark, mildly in the circumstances and fairly I thought, that the online attack led by Guthrie and friends upon Spurr “was every bit as vicious as the face-punch game,” and to point out that since Spurr had only 11 followers at the time, Guthrie’s efforts could backfire and draw even more attention to his wretched video game.

Elliott was also concerned about the real-world effects on a 24-year-old, or, as he wrote at the time, “A guy makes a face-punch game which offends you and you want him destroyed?”

Twitter debate then ensued, and it may have gone somewhat overboard in total volume of tweets, but everyone appears to agree that at no point did it descend into threats from Elliott to Guthrie. Just very vocal disagreement.

So let's pause here, for a second, and recount what happened:

1. Spurr, angry about certain person, creates ridiculous "game" allowing people to punch out said person. This seems incredibly immature, but is an expression of speech.
2. Guthrie, reasonably upset about this game, convenes people online to speak out against Spurr and to try to limit his chances for future employment. In other words, counter speech. Again, some might argue (as happened in point 3 below) that deciding to ruin someone's life because they created a stupid immature game is going a bit far, but this is still speech and counter speech.
3. Elliott challenges the soundness of such a broad attack on Spurr, noting that online vigilantism can go too far, and could backfire (giving silly immature game more attention). Counter speech to the counter speech that isn't defending the stupidity of the original game. They (and others) begin to debate on Twitter and that debate gets ugly and ridiculously childish at points but at no point resorts to any sort of threats.

At this point, all of this seems perfectly reasonable. People are disagreeing online, and speech and counter speech is happening. There are all sorts of things on the side that people can be concerned about (the idea to create such a stupid game in the first place, the power of mob justice to overreact, the insults, the more insults, etc.). But, again, this is all just your standard everyday internet argument.

And yet... somehow out of all of this: Guthrie (and others) end up charging Elliott with harassment. And then there's Reilly. Apparently in the midst of all this, she got engaged in the debate which ended up like so many debates on Twitter:

“@greg_a_elliott Please do me a favour & not reply to my posts. You don’t follow me- were you creeping the #TOpoli tag to find my tweet?” she tweeted on Aug. 9, 2012.

“.@ladysnarksalot how’d you feel if I was so delusional to ask you to not retweet me? You want “control” use your email, not Twitter. #TOpoli,” @greg_a_elliott replied, after suggesting that Reilly didn’t understand the point of Twitter.

[....]

The exchanges became increasingly hostile that month, with @greg_a_elliott tweeting that Reilly was a “hateful b–tch” and accusing her and other women he dubbed “#fascistfeminists” of ganging up on him, Reilly said.

He also posted tweets like “Heather’s fat ass gets fatter” with the #topoli hashtag but without mentioning her Twitter handle in the tweet (known as sub-tweeting), the court heard. Sub-tweeting meeting the other Twitter user mentioned won’t be automatically notified that he or she is being discussed.

It appears that most of Elliott's tweets are still online. Guthrie's and Reilly's are now private. You can see the start here, though there are many examples of friendly tweets between Elliott and Guthrie prior to this happening. Amazingly, with a little searching online, it is possible to find a spreadsheet cataloging all the tweets between the two of them. And, again, at times the insults start flying, but at no time does it appear to be threatening. Hell, it's hard to see how it's harassing. It's people expressing opinions (often angrily).

In that list you can see that the angry tweets start on July 7th of 2012 and then continue for a few months. Guthrie appears to ask Elliott to "stop contacting" her (and others asked him to do so as well) and even though they blocked him via Twitter's block feature, he sent a few more tweets their way, responding to some of the things they said. And, on the basis of that, they brought the harassment claims.

Elliott's lawyer has pointed out that it certainly appears that a bunch of Guthrie's friends were just as open to verbally sparring with Elliott -- and if his statements were somehow criminal harassment, then theirs should be as well.

A key point in all of this is that, apparently, the Canadian law in question requires the victims to "reasonably, in all the circumstances, to fear for their safety." That seems like a problematic standard for a variety of reasons, but it's very difficult to see how the bar was met here. As the original link above notes:

Yet Guthrie and Reilly didn’t behave as though they were remotely frightened or intimidated: They convened a meeting of friends to discuss how Elliott should be publicly shamed; they bombarded their followers with furious tweets and retweets about him (including a grotesque suggestion from someone pretending she was a 13-year-old that he was a pedophile); they could and did dish it out.

“They were not vulnerable,” Murphy said once. “They are very accomplished, politically savvy women. If they can’t handle being mentioned in the tail end of a political discussion (on Twitter), then they’re in the wrong business.”

As Elliott's lawyer noted, this is all "a high school spat, except it’s adults on the Internet," and the idea that a court should get involved and that there may be jail time at the end is flat out ridiculous.

It's stories like this that should freak people out about the belief that it's easy to ban "offensive" speech online. What one person takes offense to could be seen as totally reasonable by many others. In this case, it appears that there was a spat and everyone said and did some immature things, but to argue that one side is somehow guilty of a criminal offense over a Twitter spat is flat out crazy.

Filed Under: abuse, canada, free speech, greg elliott, harassment, heather reilly, internet fights, stephanie guthrie, tweets
Companies: twitter

Rightscorp Claims Its Harassing Phone Calls Safeguarded By Multiple Constitutional Amendments

from the putting-the-'rights'-back-in-'rightscorp' dept

Third-party copyright troll Rightscorp is fighting a couple of lawsuits related to its alleged telephonic harassment of alleged infringers. One wonders what the ROI is on funding robocalling in pursuit of $10-20 "settlements" from suspected infringers. Whatever it is, the ROI is definitely edging further into the red, what with the company now paying lawyers to safeguard its "right" to harass and threaten people who won't pay up (or haven't even performed any infringing activity).

I don't make this assertion lightly. Multiple complaints made to the FCC back up the assertions being made in two class-action lawsuits. Rightscorp has responded to the allegations made in the lawsuit filed earlier this year, claiming the company willfully violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) in its "collection" efforts. (Note that most collection efforts revolve around unpaid bills -- something consumers previously agreed to pay in one form or another. Rightscorp's "collections" involve no agreement from consumers -- only accusations based on little more than snippets of torrent activity and an IP address. And yet, the company treats accused infringers as though this is unpaid debt, rather than the speculative wallet-rummaging it actually is.)

Rightscorp's response is hilarious -- although certainly not intentionally. First off, it denies pretty much every allegation except for the issuing of subpoenas and emails -- things nearly impossible to deny thanks to the paper trail they create.

Once it gets past that point, it starts issuing its affirmative defenses. According to Rightscorp, several Constitutional amendments enshrine its right to harass alleged infringers over the phone.

While the majority of its eleven defenses are questionable enough, the defenses 3-6 attack the law itself, claiming that TCPA is unconstitutional, namely it violates the First, Fifth, Fourteenth, and Eighth Amendments. Why is it so, Rightscorp doesn’t say.

From the filing:

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“the TCPA”), codified at 47 U.S.C. § 227, upon which Plaintiffs’ claims rely, violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

[...]

The TCPA violates the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.

[...]

The TCPA violates the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

It appears Rightscorp would rather have the court examine a law twice held to be constitutional than look into its "collection" activities.

The First Amendment argument isn't exactly novel. Rightscorp and Warner Bros. have previously argued that copyright trolling is free speech. But, in that case, at least it actually made an argument. The affirmative defense offered here is nothing more than literally "the law violates the First Amendment," something no court has held to this point.

Beyond that, the other affirmative Constitutional defenses offered by Rightscorp are probably going to be viewed as "novel" by the court -- something that's rarely a compliment when it's written in a judicial opinion. As of right now, they're not even arguments. They're just assertions. The real fun will begin when Rightscorp starts explaining how violating a consumer protection law is not just protected speech, but is safeguarded by the application of Fifth, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Filed Under: constitution, due process, fifth amendment, first amendment, harassment, robocalls
Companies: rightscorp

A ContentID For Online Bullying? What Could Possibly Go Wrong...

from the let's-think-this-through dept

Let me start out by saying that I think online harassment and bullying is a significant problem -- though also one that is often misrepresented and distorted. I worry about the very real consequences of those who are bullied, harassed and threatened online, in that it can often lead to silencing voices that need to be heard, or even causing some to not even bother to participate for fear of the resulting bullying. That said, way too frequently, it seems that those who are speaking out about online bullying assume that the best way to deal with this is to move to push for censorship as the solution. This rarely works. Too frequently we see "cyberbullying" being used as a catchall for attacking speech people simply do not like. Even here at Techdirt, people who dislike our viewpoint will frequently claim that we "bullied" someone, merely for pointing out and discussing statements or arguments that we find questionable.

There are no easy answers to the question of how do we create spaces where people feel safer to speak their minds -- though I think it's an important goal to strive for. But I fear the seemingly simple idea of "silence those accused of bullying" will have incredibly negative consequences (with almost none of the expected benefits). We already see many attempts to censor speech that people dislike online, with frequent cases of abusive copyright takedown notices or bogus claims of defamation. Giving people an additional tool to silence such speech will be abused widely, creating tremendous damage.

We already see this in the form of ContentID from YouTube. A tool that was created with good intent, to deal with copyright infringement on the site, is all too often used to silence speech on the site, either to silence a critic or just through over-aggressive robots.

So, imagine what a total mess it would be if we had a ContentID for online bullying. And yet, it appears that the good folks at SRI are trying to build exactly that. Now, SRI certainly has led the way with many computing advancements, but it's not clear to me how this solution could possibly do anything other than create new headaches:

But what if you didn’t need humans to identify when online abuse was happening? If a computer was smart enough to spot cyberbullying as it happened, maybe it could be halted faster, without the emotional and financial costs that come with humans doing the job. At SRI International, the Silicon Valley incubator where Apple’s Siri digital assistant was born, researchers believe they’ve developed algorithms that come close to doing just that.

“Social networks are overwhelmed with these kinds of problems, and human curators can’t manage the load,” says Normal Winarsky, president of SRI Ventures. But SRI is developing an artificial intelligence with a deep understanding of how people communicate online that he says can help.

This is certainly going to sound quite appealing to those who push for anti-cyberbullying campaigns. But, at what cost? Again, there are legitimate concerns about people who are being harassed. But one person's cyberbullying could just be another person's aggressive debate tactics. Hell, I'd argue that abusing tools like contentID or false defamation claims are a form of "cyberbullying" as well. Thus, it's quite possible that the same would be true of this new tool, which can be used to "bully" those the algorithm decides is bullying as well.

Determining copyright infringement is already much more difficult than people imagine -- which is why ContentID makes so many errors. You have to take into account context, fair use, de minimis use, parody, etc. That's not easy for a machine. But at least there are some direct rules about what truly is "copyright infringement." With "bullying" or "harassment," there is no clear legal definition to match up to and it's often very much in the eye of the beholder. As such, any tool that is used to "deal" with cyberbullying is going to create tremendous problems, often just from misunderstandings between multiple people. And that could create a real chilling effect on speech.

Perhaps instead of focusing so much technical know-how on "detecting" and trying to "block" cyberbullying, we should be spending more time looking for ways to positively reinforce good behavior online. We've built up this belief that the only way to encourage good behavior online is to punish bad behavior. But we've got enough evidence at this point showing how rarely this actually works, that it seems like perhaps it's time for a different approach. And a "ContentID for harassment" seems unlikely to help.

Filed Under: automation, bullying, contentid, cyberbullying, harassment
Companies: sri