Leaked Cable Shows That ACTA Secrecy Is Way Beyond Normal

from the didn't-we-say-that? dept

As more and more attention was paid to the ridiculous level of secrecy concerning the ACTA negotiators last year, a bunch of ACTA supporters tried to claim that the level of secrecy (such as calling it a state secret involving national security) was perfectly normal for such agreements. A year ago, we went through a rather detailed explanation of how similar negotiations were much more open. The response we heard was that we were wrong and that this was "entirely normal." Turns out, even the diplomats involved knew this was bunk. One of the latest cable leaks from Wikileaks shows an Italian diplomat complaining to a US official about the level of secrecy involved in ACTA, noting that it's much higher than normal and that it makes it more difficult to get stuff done:

The level of confidentiality in these ACTA negotiations has been set at a higher level than is customary for non-security agreements. According to Mazza, it is impossible for member states to conduct necessary consultations with IPR stakeholders and legislatures under this level of confidentiality.

Can't wait to see defenders of ACTA secrecy try to backtrack their claims that the secrecy level was perfectly normal.

Separately, this particular cable shows some of the problems with the USTR's annual Special 301 report in which it makes up a list of who's been naughty and who's been nice when it comes to intellectual property issues -- based not on evidence, but almost entirely on entertainment industry and pharma industry say so. The Italian official complained to the US that Italy had been working hard to crack down on infringement in Italy, but the USTR slammed them anyway and made no mention of all of the efforts they'd already put towards pushing through changes that Hollywood (via the State Department) was demanding. The Italian official was worried that this would actually lead to a setback, as Italian government officials wondered why they should bother if the USTR was just going to slam them no matter what they did.

Of course, none of this is a surprise. The same points about both the Special 301 process and ACTA secrecy were made by many folks, including us at Techdirt, and every time we did, supporters mocked us for "crying wolf" and making stuff up. Yet, now, it turns out that the points many folks were raising were also being stated by government officials.

Filed Under: acta, italy, secrecy, sweden, wikileaks
Companies: wikileaks

Leaked State Department Cable Shows 'Behind The Scenes' US Embassy Involvement In Swedish Copyright Issues

from the no-surprise-there dept

It's long been common knowledge that US diplomats have had a heavy hand in other country's copyright laws but, with the Wikileaks release of State Department cables, we're finally seeing some actually confirmation of that. We've already covered the US's involvement in Spain's proposed copyright changes and now a Swedish television station claims to have a cable (not yet released by Wikileaks) that shows heavy "behind the scenes" involvement by the US Embassy in Swedish copyright law. The key points are that the US diplomat admits that public perception is (quite accurately) that the raid and subsequent trial of The Pirate Bay was due to pressure from the US government and that public perception was in favor of The Pirate Bay and against the US government's position on copyright law. Thus, "this delicate situation made it difficult, if not counter-productive, for the Embassy to play a public role on IPR issues. Behind the scenes, the Embassy has worked well with all stakeholders."

Why do I get the feeling that "all stakeholders" seemed to leave out the public and actual content consumers who were (as stated) very much against the US government's position on copyright laws. However, the cable also lays out six specific items that the US Embassy hoped the Swedish government would follow through on with regards to copyright law... and apparently five of the six have since been implemented. So despite the public being very much against these ideas, the US government (at the urging of the US entertainment industry) directly meddled in Swedish copyright policy.

Filed Under: copyright, sweden, the pirate bay, us embassy, wikileaks
Companies: the pirate bay, wikileaks

On The Arrest Of Julian Assange

from the this-is-what-we-cover? dept

To date, I had avoided all of the stories both about the allegations against Julian Assange in Sweden, as well as his arrest this morning. But people keep asking us to cover it. Frankly, I'm not sure what to say about it. Assange's former lawyer's writeup for Crikey, in which he presents a compelling, if extremely one-sided view of how Sweden appears to be "making it up as it goes along," is an interesting read but, again, it is extremely one-sided. Slate's more level-headed analysis of questions concerning consensual sex laws is also worth reading.

The reason I have not covered this is, while this whole thing has obviously become political, these charges do not, officially, have anything to do with Wikileaks. Perhaps the two cannot be separated but there's a lot of FUD flying from all sides on this right now and it seems rather early to comment on all of this.

However, I think the larger point is that too many are looking to connect this issue more closely to Wikileaks than it deserves to be connected. We're interested in Wikileaks from a public policy perspective and what it means for free speech, whistleblowing and journalism in a distributed world. I have no idea what happened between Assange and those two women in Sweden and it's difficult to see how adding any commentary on the matter at this stage really adds anything to the discussion.

Filed Under: arrest, julian assange, sweden, uk, wikileaks

As The Pirate Bay Guys Lose Their Appeal, When Does Google Regret Not Coming To Their Defense?

from the search-engines... dept

As you probably already know, last Friday (while we were enjoying some much needed time off), the Swedish appeals court upheld the lower court's ruling against the four guys the entertainment industry claims were behind The Pirate Bay. The appeals court shortened the jail sentences, but increased the fines that each had to pay (one of the original four guys, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, missed this trial, but will be tried again separately). I don't think anyone watching the two trials is all that surprised by the outcome -- though, if you look at the details, it certainly suggests a court and law enforcement system that still has no clue concerning what it was actually dealing with. One of the defendants, Peter, has a rather interesting blog post (Google translation from the original Swedish) in which he details a number of blatant factual errors made by the courts in the latest ruling. I'm sure that those who dislike The Pirate Bay will not pay attention to what he has to say and will assume he is lying. But it does appear that much of the ruling against Peter is based on a pretty blatant misunderstanding of basic technology, blaming him for things it's unlikely he had anything to do with whatsoever.

What strikes me about this ruling -- and Homeland Security's seizure of a bunch of domain names, which I'll cover in a later post -- is that at some point, I believe Google is going to regret not getting involved on the side of The Pirate Bay in this trial. It's obvious why they did that. Google is already having enough trouble with the entertainment industry, and The Pirate Bay is still seen as sort of radioactive when it comes to these discussions. Supporting The Pirate Bay was simply not politically possible. In fact, Google went the other direction and tried to specifically distance itself from The Pirate Bay. Yet, for all intents and purposes, The Pirate Bay was also a search engine. A specialized one, but really no different in important respects than Google. The specific points that got The Pirate Bay in trouble could all be equally applied to a general purpose search engine like Google. And with Google already dealing with executives given prison sentences due to its services in other countries, you'd think it would be a bit more sensitive to realizing the slippery slope created when you send someone to jail for the way a search engine is used.

Filed Under: copyright, liability, search engines, sweden, the pirate bay
Companies: google, the pirate bay

Guy Fined For Posting Links To Official Broadcast Of Hockey Games

from the say-what-now? dept

Over in Sweden, it appears that a guy has been fined for linking to an online broadcast of a hockey game. We've heard stories of people getting in trouble merely for linking to unauthorized content, but this story is even more ridiculous. The guy wasn't linking to unauthorized content. He was linking to an online video feed from the official broadcaster, Canal Plus. The issue was that Canal Plus was apparently technically incompetent in how they set up the feeds, and never intended to make the feeds public. But the way they set up the offering, it was easy for anyone to quickly figure out what the full public feed was and this guy then linked to it. In other words, he was fined not for any actual infringement. And he was not fined for linking to infringing content, but for pointing to a publicly available stream that was only public due to Canal Plus' poor engineering choices. And rather than admit that it was its own poor technical skills that were the problem, Canal Plus blamed the guy:

In the summons against the man, Canal Plus called his actions “an assault on the entire operations of pay TV services on the Internet” and that by publishing links to the streams broadcast openly from the Canal Plus website he had illegally made them available to the public.

And the court agreed. That's the really scary part.

Filed Under: copyright, hockey, links, sweden
Companies: canal plus

Movie Debuts In Theater And On The Pirate Bay (On Purpose)

from the with-a-nice-message dept

Often, when we talk about films that creators choose to share via BitTorrent, one of the snarky comments we'll get is that they only did this because they couldn't get the film into a theater. So it's interesting to see that the filmmakers behind the new Swedish film Die Beauty have decided to release the film in theaters and on The Pirate Bay at the same time.

Most interesting of all may be the statement of the filmmaker, about the power of using BitTorrent and The Pirate Bay to reach a wider audience -- and how all the works of filmmakers in the past who never got the attention they deserved can now have a new life:

"Sometimes I think about all the filmmakers and musicians who passed away. Those who never got to be a part of the world wide web. No matter how hard they worked or no matter how much money they put into distribution, they couldnt reach more than a small part ofthe world.

Now their work have the opportunity to get new life. The possibility to be rediscovered by a new generation. A new world. To reject that,to prevent that from happening, is a sin. I think Charlie Chaplin would have one thing to say to all those people who do: Idiots.

Die Beauty is my first feature and releasing the film here is an obvious thing to do. And the fact that The Pirate Bay decided to give the film a world wide premiere on the frontpage makes me speechless. It's a privilege to be able to introduce the film to the greatest audience in the world."

Nice to see more filmmakers embracing what's possible, rather than hating what's possible.

Filed Under: attention, debut, movies, sweden
Companies: the pirate bay

Are Swedish Police Violating Copyright Law In Creating Shoe Database?

from the if-the-shoe-fits dept

Sweden has certainly been an interesting country to watch on copyright issues. Home of The Pirate Bay, the original Pirate Party, and an awful lot of people who seem to feel pretty strongly that copyright law is out of control, there are still plenty of Swedes who feel the opposite way and support stronger copyright law. It often appears that law enforcement in Sweden is strongly aligned with those interests, working hard to prosecute The Pirate Bay and having staff members that seem to jump back and forth between the police department and the entertainment industry.

So, it's a bit amusing to find out that the Swedish National Police may be in a bit of hot water themselves after building a national "shoe database" (Google translation from the original Swedish) for use in tracking what kinds of shoes make what kinds of tracks. But how did they build the database? They just went online and downloaded pictures from various websites.

And it turns out that might not be legal.

The police claim that the law lets them ignore copyright in solving crimes, but an intellectual property professor quoted in the article notes that such an exemption only applies in the direct police investigation of a specific crime -- not for the sake of building up a general database. The professor suggests that this appears to be a clear violation of Swedish copyright laws.

While I do think it's silly that this should be considered infringement (a database of shoe treads? really?), I do find it amusing when organizations that always promote themselves as strongly pro-copyright discover how that can come back to bite them.

Filed Under: copyright, sweden

Pirate Party Launches Pirate ISP; Demonstrating The Inevitable

from the can't-fight-the-inevitable dept

As a bunch of you have been submitting, The Pirate Party, who recently took on hosting The Pirate Bay, has now announced plans to offer a "Pirate ISP" service in Sweden, with the idea being to offer ISP service that maximizes privacy rights. The whole thing is a bit of a publicity stunt, of course, but it does seem to highlight the key point: which is that consumers do value these kinds of things, and for every attempt of certain industries to force ISPs to reveal info, there will always be incentives for others to set up ways for more privacy. I tend to cringe at the whole "pirate ISP" name, because it will almost certainly be misunderstood and demonized, but The Pirate Party long ago decided to embrace that name, so I guess it's no surprise.

Filed Under: isps, pirate isp, pirate party, privacy, sweden

Swedish ISP Told Not Just To Stop Hosting The Pirate Bay But To Block Others From Reaching It As Well [Updated]

from the overkill? dept

A former ISP for The Pirate Bay, Black Internet, was told by a Swedish court that it had to stop hosting the site a while back. The Pirate Bay quickly switched to a different provider, but Black Internet went to court to challenge the legality of being told whom it can and cannot host. It appears that the Swedish appeals court ruling on the matter went beyond just telling Black Internet that it can't host The Pirate Bay, it also told the ISP that it must block all of its customers from reaching the site, even though the site is no longer hosted by Black Internet. It seems like yet another attempt by courts trying to play whac-a-mole in an incredibly ineffective manner that is likely to do more damage than good. Completely blocking people from reaching a site, even if they have legitimate reasons for reaching it, doesn't help anyone. Those who are interested in infringing on copyrights will still figure out plenty of ways to do so. They'll route around the blocks or go to other sites. So what does this do other than create an inconvenience and set a bad precedent for any ISP? Update: Thanks to folks in the comments for pointing out the update, where the court is claiming that Black Internet misinterpreted the decision, which says that Black is prohibited from providing "internet access" and there's a bit of a debate over what "internet access" means. It appears that Black interpreted that to mean "access" while the judge meant just hosting.

Filed Under: blocking, hosting, sweden
Companies: black internet, the pirate bay