New Vietnam Decree Says Blogs And Social Media Must Contain Only Personal Information, Not News Reports

from the content-free-content dept

Around the world, we have been watching the gradual taming of social media, especially in countries where governments keep mainstream media on a tight leash. But even against that background, this news from the Bangkok Post about Vietnam's latest moves to censor online content is pretty extraordinary:

"Personal electronic sites are only allowed to put news owned by that person, and are not allowed to 'quote', 'gather' or summarise information from press organisations or government websites," local media quoted Hoang Vinh Bao, director of the Broadcasting and Electronic Information Department at the Ministry of Information and Communications, as saying.

The ban was approved by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on July 15, communicated to Vietnamese press late Wednesday, and was due to come into force on Sept 1.

It also bans individuals from providing "general information" on their profiles or blogs.

That's even more extreme than China's approach, which may take down troublesome material as soon as it is put up, but at least allows the possibility of putting it up in the first place. Vietnam's rules mean that online news can only be carried by "official" channels, which are closely regulated. For everyone else, it seems, the Internet must by law become the realm of entirely content-free narcissism -- and pictures of cats.

In response, the US Embassy in Vietnam has released a statement expressing its "concerns" about this move:

Fundamental freedoms apply online just as they do offline. Decree 72 appears to be inconsistent with Vietnam's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as its commitments under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Who says Americans don't do irony?

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Filed Under: blogs, free speech, independent journalism, journalism, news, social media, vietnam

Homeland Security Threatens Legal Action Against Employees Who Read News About Leaks

from the while-one-politician-looks-to-stop-it dept

We've talked about procedures within the Defense Department to block computers from accessing the website for The Guardian newspaper -- along with similarly short-sighted moves to apply a sledgehammer approach to pretending that public information isn't really public. I've heard from a few people within the Defense Department who defend this approach on basic procedural grounds of trying to "make sure" that classified info remains classified, but the real problem is considering any publicly revealed documents as still classified. As I've said each time this debate comes up, in the business world, the equivalent situation involving trade secrets or non-disclosure agreements almost always are recognized as null and void if the info becomes public through other means.

However, that's not the way the government works. The latest is that Homeland Security sent around a memo warning employees that merely opening up a Washington Post article about some of the leaks might violate their non-disclosure agreement to "protect National Security Information," and it even says that merely clicking on the story might make the reader "subject to any administrative or legal action from the Government." Got that? Working for the government and merely reading the news about things the government is doing might subject you to legal action.

Stunning.

At least someone in Congress realizes the insanity of all of this. Rep. Grayson, who displayed the very same NSA slides that DHS is warning its employees about in Congress itself, has offered up an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill, stating that nothing in the defense appropriations should be used to block employees from reading the news on their own time.

None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to restrict the access of members of the Armed Forces to publically available online news media during morale, welfare, and recreation periods.

While this is one way to deal with the problem, I still think you solve a lot more problems with a basic recognition of reality: if classified documents become public, they shouldn't be considered classified any more, because (a) that's stupid and (b) it actually hinders the ability of government employees to be as knowledgeable as everyone else in the world. Also, Grayson's amendment only applies to the members of the armed forces, but not to civilian employees of the Department of Defense, or any employees of Homeland Security, who are subject to the crazy threats above.

Filed Under: alan grayson, appropriations, defense department, homeland security, leaks, news, reading, websites

AP's Attempt At DRM'ing The News Shuts Down

from the total-failure dept

Plenty of people rightly mocked the news a few years ago that the Associated Press was working on a plan to "DRM the news." The idea was to put some sort of licensing mechanism together to get news aggregators to pay to promote their news. This seemed incredibly dumb for a whole host of reasons. It added no value. Its only purpose was to limit the value for everyone in the system by putting a tollbooth where none needed to exist. When it finally launched last year to great fanfare in the newspaper world, under the name "NewsRight," we pointed out that, once again, it made no sense. Basically, the whole focus appeared to be on getting bloggers and aggregators to pay for a license they legally did not need.

Since the launch... we heard absolutely nothing about NewsRight. There was a launch, with its newspaper backers claiming it was some huge moment for newspapers, and then nothing.

Well, until now, when we find out that NewsRight quietly shut down. Apparently, among its many problems, many of the big name news organization that owned NewsRight wouldn't even include their own works as part of the "license" because they feared cannibalizing revenue from other sources. So, take legacy companies that are backwards looking, combine it with a licensing scheme based on no legal right, a lack of any actual added value and (finally) mix in players who are scared of cannibalizing some cash cow... and it adds up to an easy failure.

Filed Under: drm, journalism, licensing, news
Companies: associated press, newsright

No, Freak Gross Injuries Shouldn't Mean Media Outlets Can't Show Them

from the ouchy dept

Perhaps it's time we codified this, but it appears that for every horrible occurrence there will be an unequal, disproportionately large reaction to it. I humbly suggest we refer to this as Geigner's Law, because why the hell should Mike and Godwin be the only people with their name's attached to things? Regardless, it seems to me that this odd rule has been more greatly followed in the age of the internet. Terrorism got you down? Well, then obviously everyone should censor all things even remotely terrorist. A bunch of people lost their marbles and went on shooting rampages? Surely this means protected speech like videogames should face the consequences.

And, now that anyone remotely interested in college basketball had to spend Sunday evening figuring out how to get their previously eaten Easter dinner out of their carpeting thanks to Kevin Ware's disgustingly awful injury on live television, it's apparently time to call out any news outlet that showed the injury in the aftermath.

Don’t give me the Deadspin “Warning: Very Gross” alert either, as though that somehow absolves you from any sin; hell, the video embedded in that Deadspin post is stuck on a preview frame that pretty clearly shows Ware’s shin bone sticking through his leg. Even if you don’t want to watch the video, you don’t really have a choice.

Sites like The Big Lead may have one-upped even the freeze frame preview; by initially including a fully animated GIF on their immediate blog post about the injury before pulling that GIF in favor of just the reaction shot of the Louisville bench, TBL managed to not only generate thousands (and possibly tens of thousands) of hits, but then were able to play the high and mighty, “we’re not going to show that anymore” card a couple hours later – presumably after searches for “Kevin Ware Injury” had died down. It’s hypocrisy of the highest magnitude.

Look, let me be super clear here: the Ware injury footage is brutal. The guy's shin bone snapped in half and the angle of the shots show it with cookie-tossing clarity. In my opinion, you shouldn't watch it, unless you've ingested some kind of poison and you're looking to throw it up. I wouldn't even think of embedding the video here. It's that bad.

And that it's that bad is also my opinion. The simple fact of the matter is that sports is news, this injury is news, and the footage of it is news. We can argue all we want about whether that footage has value for the news consumer, and I'd argue it does as a matter of public inquiry, but that it's news cannot be doubted. There really is no argument to the contrary, as the article's author themselves note.

I don’t care that it’s “newsworthy” – write the story, and let the gawking onlookers go find the video for themselves.

Follow the two logical problems in these statements. First, don't show the footage, because everyone can already find it everywhere else. Surely calling on the media to censor themselves would never result in calls for similar censorship elsewhere, eventually disappearing this and perhaps even more newsworthy footage altogether. What could possibly go wrong? Secondly, if uncomfortable but newsworthy footage can be buried for something like sports under the notion that nobody should be getting "clicks" or money as a result of someone else's pain, does that also hold true for news items about war, gun-violence, murder, drugs, etc.?

The fact is that the original premise was right, just pointed at the wrong target. Yes, in the age of the internet, people have choices in how they consume the news. What that means is not that the media should self-censor upsetting footage. It means that anyone, like me, who wants the news without that footage can indeed get it elsewhere.

Filed Under: basketball, censorship, coverage, injuries, journalism, kevin ware, news

The Problems Of Patent Trolls Continuing To Get Mainstream Attention

from the good-news dept

There's been a recent uptick in stories about patent trolling getting mainstream media attention, and the latest example is a recent segment on CBS's national morning program, CBS This Morning, which explored how patent trolls are hurting the US economy, mainly by focusing on the story of Uniloc suing the maker of X-plane. When we last wrote about that lawsuit, X-plane developer Laminer Research wasn't sure if it was going to fight the lawsuit, but as you can see in the video above, Laminer's Austin Meyer has decided he's going to fight the case no matter what -- even if it costs him $1.5 million (way more than it would cost to settle). Of course, this is how the trolls operate, by trying to make it cheaper to settle than to fight, but sometimes people have to take a stand and Meyer has decided to do exactly that.

The overall piece is well done, and includes some excellent commentary from the newly appointed Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents, Julie Samuels (though, the segment was apparently put together before she got that title, so she's merely described as the more mortal "EFF staff attorney" in the segment).

Either way, the whole thing demonstrates in a nice capsule just how ridiculous patent trolling is and how prevalent it has become. And, best of all, they really kept repeating the key point: this is hurting innovation in the US. After the segment, done by Jeff Glor, one of the anchors specifically says to him: "So it sounds like this is really stifling innovation and it hurts small businesses!" Yes, yes it is, but for years we've been told no one in the public cares. However, as this issue gets more and more mainstream attention, people are going to realize that it cannot be allowed to continue.

Filed Under: attention, mainstream, news, patent trolling, patents

Google To French Media: We May Have To Cut You Off

from the sacrebleu dept

If you're like me, you may have thought that France was simply a repository for cheese-eating surrender-monkeys. It turns out that's not true. They also have a wonderful court system that doesn't want to understand the digital world. That same French court system also managed to make a complete mockery of HADOPI, all while hysterically referring to their actions as "justice".

But French lawmakers now have a new target in their crosshairs: Google. Lawmakers are reportedly considering legislation that will force search engines to pay for sending French newspapers readers.

French newspaper publishers have been pushing for the law, saying it is unfair that Google receives advertising revenue from searches for news.

French Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti also favours the idea.

This may be my favorite stance of all time. It's unfair that Google, a search engine, receives revenue on searches, i.e. their business, and it should instead go to news organizations that are not in the business of search but still receive the traffic. I am sure there's a word out there that properly describes the stupidity of this stance, but so far all the ones I'm coming up with involve the kind of language Mike keeps telling me I'm not allowed to use on Techdirt (which is [censored], by the way (oh, come on, really?)).

Google, because they don't exist in the same non-logic-ungrateful-verse, and after apparently spending some time reading our comments section and picking up on some suggestions there, is now letting France know that if they go through with the law, they'll simply exclude French media organizations from search results. In addition, in a letter to lawmakers, they added:

Google said such a law "would threaten its very existence".

Google France had said earlier that the plan "would be harmful to the internet, internet users and news websites that benefit from substantial traffic" that comes via Google's search engine. It said it redirected four billion clicks to French media pages each month.

Which leaves France with an interesting choice. Continue on with their proposed legislative silliness and forfeit all the traffic Google sends French newspapers via search results, or retreat from their position, thus proving my ignorant American stereotyping of them correct. Your move, France!

Filed Under: france, liability, links, news, payment
Companies: google

Bangladesh Seeks To Throttle Independent News Sites And Their Awkward Stories

from the good-news-only dept

One of the great things about online news sites is that they are so easy to set up: you don't need a printing press or huge numbers of journalists -- you just start posting interesting stories to the Web and you are away. That is, you do unless you happen to live in Bangladesh, where new regulations will make it much harder to set up news sites, as this story from Access Now explains:

the regulation "stipulates that a onetime payment of Bangladeshi Taka 500,000 (USD $6,100) should be deposited with the Ministry of Information to get a license for an online news portal. Each year this license should be renewed by paying 50,000 Taka (USD $610). The license fee can be revised by the government at anytime."

To put those numbers in context, the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in Bangladesh, when adjusted for purchasing power parity, is roughly USD $1,700 per year. That ranks 196th in the world, right near the bottom.

Bangladesh is not only one of the poorest nations on earth, it also does pretty badly when it comes to press freedom, ranking 129 out of 179 countries listed on Reporters Without Borders' Press Freedom Index for 2011-12. The new regulations seem likely to push it further down that list, not least thanks to rules like these:

The following program/news should not be published/broadcast: … (b) Any news/program that is violating the main principles of the state and the governance; … (e) Any indecent or provocative satire/music/advertisement/news or any program with subtitles that may pollute, corrupt or hurt peoples' feeling and morality. … (k) Any news/program that may hurt the feeling of any friendly country.

Other requirements are that the servers running the news site must be located inside Bangladesh, and that their IP addresses must be provided to the Ministry of Information. More bizarrely:

No local online portal should link to other local and international news portals.

As the Access Now piece points out, this suggests the Bangladeshi government doesn’t understand how the Internet works, since a news site without links to other online news stories is doomed to parochialism.

Or maybe that's the point. After all, it seems pretty clear that the measures are designed to stifle dissent and criticism of the government by making it very hard for independent news sites to be created except by well-funded outfits more interested in profits than protest, and hobbling them in various ways even if they do. It's particularly sad to see Bangladesh trying to restrict the use of a wonderful technology that could do so much to help lift its people from the difficult circumstances in which they live.

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Filed Under: bangladesh, censorship, free speech, news, registration

This Is Reporting? Fox News Ties Flame Malware To Angry Birds Because Both Use Lua

from the wow dept

We're often told that the big media companies need to be saved because of all the important expensive reporting work they do. And then we see something absolutely ridiculous, such as Fox News linking the infamous Flame malware to Angry Birds... because both use the Lua computing language (found via Slashdot):
This is, of course, a complete pointless linkage, which seems to serve no purpose whatsoever, other than (perhaps) to attract the attention of those who are obsessed with Angry Birds (an admittedly large group of people). But just because two programs are written in the same language, it doesn't mean... well, it doesn't mean anything of importance whatsoever. Instead, it just seems like Fox News and its "Chief Intelligence Correspondent" Catherine Herridge needed to fill some space and came up with something entirely pointless. But, you know, we need those big professional news companies because of deep, hard-hitting stories like this one.

Filed Under: angry birds, flame, lua, malware, news
Companies: fox news