Obama Administration Warns Australia About Its Internet Censorship Plan

from the you-better-run,-you-better-take-cover dept

With the latest in a long line of attempts by the Australian gov't to censor the internet in a manner similar to China, it seems that its plans have finally caught the attention of the US government. The State Department has apparently raised concerns about the plan with the Australian government. The specifics of the comments to the Australian gov't were not made clear beyond "we have raised our concerns on this matter." Of course, those comments might carry a bit more weight if US politicians didn't keep suggesting similar (if not quite as stringent) plans in the US as well...

Filed Under: australia, censorship, obama

Federal Gov't Mostly Ignoring Obama Directive To Be More Transparent

from the the-opposite-is-happening dept

One of the first things that President Obama did upon taking office was promise a much more open and transparent administration from what came before. He issued a "directive" to federal agencies to start with the assumption of openness and only back down from it with good reason. And yet, as we've seen over and over again, federal agencies have been anything but transparent -- and a new study supports that. The AP looked at Freedom of Information Act requests and found that agencies are turning down FOIA requests at a much greater rate than the last administration, and doing so using a "deliberative process" exemption -- which Obama specifically told agencies to avoid if possible. Amusingly, the AP notes that the administration still hasn't responded to its own FOIA request about the gov't's new transparency plans.

Along those lines, rather than waiting for the government to just be proactive in being transparent, why not help them along? You may recall last year that Jim Harper set up a system to crowdsource a comprehensive collection of earmark data that was required to be released -- but which was released in a variety of different and confusing ways. Now that the feds are finally moving towards standardizing how earmark data is released, Harper along with Jerry Brito are trying to make sure that the standardized format is as useful as possible. They've set up EarmarkData.org to try to help create a standardized format that will actually capture and present the data in the most useful way.

Filed Under: freedom of information, obama, transparency

Obama: We Must Move Forward On ACTA

from the missing-the-point dept

With the EU Parliament soundly voting against ACTA secrecy and current proposals, lots of folks have been wondering how the US was going to respond. So far, it's not looking good. The USTR gave a giant no comment, and President Obama (who had been pretty quiet on ACTA himself) addressed ACTA in a speech, where he expressed strong support for continuing to move forward with ACTA.

What was telling, however, was how he described ACTA -- which is that he used the bogus arguments for what people think ACTA is about, rather than what's actually in the agreement. It's a political trick:

"There's nothing wrong with other people using our technologies, we welcome it -- we just want to make sure that it's licensed, and that American businesses are getting paid appropriately," Obama said. "That's why [the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative] is using the full arsenal of tools available to crack down on practices that blatantly harm our businesses, and that includes negotiating proper protections and enforcing our existing agreements, and moving forward on new agreements, including the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement."

Except, of course, ACTA goes way, way, way beyond that. It's disappointing that Obama, who keeps insisting he's in favor of greater transparency in government seems to be ignoring the fact that the USTR has been anything but transparent on ACTA, and that the whole effort has really been a blatant push by the entertainment industry and pharma to engage in legislative laundering to push through all sorts of restrictive rules that have nothing, whatsoever, to do with protecting against counterfeiting.

Filed Under: acta, obama

Obama Calls The Patent Office Embarrassing For Its Outdated Workflow

from the if-only-they'd-patented-a-smarter-workflow-system dept

Ezra Gildesgame wrote in to let us know that President Obama called the Patent Office "embarrassing" for its archaic workflow process:

"Believe it or not, in our patent office -- now, this is embarrassing -- this is an institution responsible for protecting and promoting innovation -- our patent office receives more than 80 percent of patent applications electronically, then manually prints them out, scans them, and enters them into an outdated case management system."

Indeed. It is embarrassing (perhaps the fear of patent infringement holds the patent office back from modernizing?), but not quite as embarrassing as the fact that the patent office has not done its job of "protecting and promoting innovation" at all for a very long time. Given the number of questionable and obvious patents that it has approved, and its willingness to create massive patent thickets, it has become clear that the patent office has been much more focused on processing patents, not in promoting innovation.

Filed Under: obama, patents
Companies: uspto

White House Actually Goes Against Hollywood, Supports Copyright Exemptions For Visually Impaired

from the didn't-expect-that dept

With the Obama White House appearing thoroughly convinced of the entertainment industry's views on "piracy," it's a bit surprising to hear that it has come out in favor of a proposed treaty to create copyright exceptions for the visually impaired. This is the WIPO treaty that we recently wrote about, noting that all those organizations pushing for ACTA were very much against this particular treaty. The Commerce Department even responded to the entertainment industry by saying that nothing about the treaty appears to "weaken" international copyright law, as they fear.

Unfortunately, the details suggest a bit of horse trading may be going on. The report suggests that the Commerce Department is saying that it will support this particular treaty, but it will seek to strengthen copyright law pretty much everywhere else (by which it means full support for ACTA). There's been a near universal alignment on these two treaties: those in favor of the WIPO one are against ACTA, and those in favor of ACTA are against this treaty. Reading a bit between the lines, it looks like the Obama White House is saying it will support both treaties. While the WIPO treaty is important, it's a much smaller deal than the ACTA treaty. So, even if the White House is supporting it, it looks like it may just be doing so to remove some complaints on ACTA, which is the big problem.

Filed Under: copyright, obama, treaties, visually impaired, white house, wipo

Administration Finally Releasing Some Info On Telco Immunity Lobbying

from the quite-a-fight dept

After many attempts to block or delay the release of info on who lobbied the federal government last year for telco immunity in lawsuits involving the fed's warrantless wiretapping program, the government has finally agreed to hand over some of the information requested. Of course, since the administration had already won a longer delay, and only some of the info is being revealed, I'm guessing that there isn't much surprising in what's being released -- though it makes you wonder why the administration went to such lengths to hide it.

Filed Under: lobbying, obama, state secrets, warrantless wiretapping
Companies: eff

Does The White House Have Any Legal Right To Demand No Modifications To Its Photos?

from the doesn't-appear-that-way dept

You may recall earlier this year that there was a fair bit of controversy when the White House started putting photos up on Flickr. Or, rather, there was controversy over the licensing. Everyone thought it was great that the White House would have its own Flickr channel and constantly post photos -- but since Flickr only had certain licensing options that you could put on a photo, there was a problem. Even though the White House chose a Creative Commons Attribution license at the time, that was still too much. Government documents are not covered by copyright, and the photos clearly should be public domain. After a bit of back-and-forth, Flickr created a special public domain license so the White House could properly designate the photos.

And yet... it appears that the White House is now trying to claw back some rights over these photos that it just doesn't have. Tim Lee points out that along with these officials photos is a licensing claim that goes well beyond the public domain, stating:

This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

The problem is the White House has no right to say that you can't manipulate the photo, since the photo is public domain. It's really unfortunate that, once again, we're seeing how little people seem to understand (or value) the public domain.

Filed Under: obama, photos, public domain, white house

Obama Administration Uses 'State Secrets' Clause To Try To Block All Warrantless Wiretapping Cases

from the transparency-is-dead dept

Despite new rules from the Obama administration that are supposed to reduce the use of "state secrets" claims to avoid revealing certain information, the first use of such a claim out of the administration since change the rules is to (once again) try to stop lawsuits involving warrantless wiretapping efforts by the federal government that began under the Bush administration. Again, this is disappointing. It remains difficult for me to see how anyone can justify a warrantless wiretapping program. I have no problem with a wiretapping program that has judicial oversight, but how can anyone defend a system that had no oversight at all?

Filed Under: obama, state secrets, warrantless wiretapping

Flickr Obama/Joker Takedown Story Gets... Odd

from the so-what-happened? dept

We were a bit confused over the claim recently that Flickr (Yahoo) had taken down a Photoshopped image of Obama as "the Joker" superimposed on a Time Magazine cover. It didn't make much sense, because it wasn't clear who's copyright was even at issue. It didn't seem likely that Time Magazine would have any claim, even though that's what many assumed. So, some folks started asking around -- and all of the "obvious" candidates said no. Time Magazine, DC Comics and the original photographer who took the image on which the photo was based all insisted they didn't send the takedown. That resulted in some fingerpointing at Flickr, but some more digging by Thomas Hawk turned up a guy named Edward Przydzial (though Yahoo's takedown notification called him Przydzia, which resulted in even more confusion initially. But, no one seems to know who he is and what copyright he might hold in the matter, making the whole story quite bizarre. Hawk contacted Przydzial, who responded claiming that he created the image... but also that he doesn't own the image, and refused to say whether or not he filed the DMCA notice (and some bizarre stuff about needing a court order to find out who filed the DMCA notice). Once again, this highlights some of the inanities of the whole DMCA takedown process.

Filed Under: copyright, fair use, flickr, joker, obama
Companies: yahoo

Did Flickr Takedown Obama Joker Time Cover Over Copyright Infringement?

from the what-was-copied? dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in this story about Flickr supposedly taking down the "Obama Joker" Time Magazine cover that's been in the news lately, but I have to admit that I'm confused about the reasoning behind the takedown. There are questions of whether it's just "censorship," but I'm trying to figure out what's the actual copyright claim. The suggestion is that the concern is from Time Magazine, which doesn't like its brand associated with the falsified cover -- but wouldn't that be a trademark issue, rather than a copyright one? If there's any copyright issue at all, it would potentially (and then, weakly) be from whoever owns the rights to the original photo that was changed. But seeing as there's still an ongoing battle in the Shepard Fairey case to determine if that sort of thing is fair use and I haven't seen anyone identify the original Obama photo that was used here, it's not even clear who would be crying copyright infringement. So... where exactly is the copyright infringement here?

Filed Under: copyright, fair use, flickr, joker, obama
Companies: yahoo