Twitter Suspended Cory Doctorow For Putting Trolls On A List Called 'Colossal Assholes'

from the moderation-impossibility dept

Shout it from the rooftops: content moderation at scale is impossible to do well. Mistakes will always be made, or even "legitimate" decisions will appear "wrong" to many, many people. The latest example: Twitter -- which has received criticism for being both too aggressive in shutting down accounts and not nearly aggressive enough (sometimes by the same people) -- suspended Cory Doctorow's account earlier this week. The reasoning for the suspension? He would put various trolls onto a Twitter list called "colossal assholes" before muting them, and Twitter claimed this violated its policies (though the company only told him well after it suspended him):

I woke up yesterday morning and discovered that my account was locked. There was no explanation, either in the app, the site or my email for this. I contacted everyone I knew at Twitter, and everyone who knew anyone at Twitter. At 830AM Pacific – about 5h after the suspension – I got an email from support – saying I'd been suspended for having a list to which I add trolls called "colossal assholes."

I'm not sure that this qualifies as a ToS violation (I gave up reporting trolls who called me much worse, because Twitter inevitably replied that these epithets were not prohibited), but it's super-weird that they suspended me without warning or explanation. Also weird: I could not rename the list while suspended, only delete it (I tried to rename it "thoroughly unpleasant individuals").

Weirder: "Colossal assholes" got me suspended, but not its companion list, "Toe-faced shitweasels"

Given the kind of language that I regularly see on Twitter, I agree that this certainly appears to be a silly decision (as is the failure to let him just rename the list, not to mention the failure to notify him until many hours later). At the same time, going back to the Masnick Impossibility Theorem, I can totally see how this happened, where a content moderator (perhaps alerted by some keyword-checking algorithm) flagged the list "colossal assholes" and decided that maybe it violated Twitter's prohibition on abuse/harassment or hateful conduct.

The issue, of course, is that an overworked content moderation team isn't going to be in a position to explore who Cory is, how he's using that list or -- most importantly -- if the list is actually made up of "colossal assholes." It's just going to pull the plug. Of course, there's an argument that merely adding an account to a list is not a form of harassment -- but that ignores the fact that just a few months ago Twitter was heavily criticized for not doing enough to stop trolls from abusing the list feature to harass people.

Again: getting this right is impossible. One person's trolling is another person's counter trolling. One person's impassioned debate is another person's harassment. There's literally no way to get this right -- though I do think that this one looks particularly silly and that Twitter's notification process here could have been much better (also it should have let him change the list name, rather than just deleting it).

In the meantime, Cory has announced that he's renamed all of his lists:

Also, in response to Twitter's sensitivity about "colossal assholes" as a listname, I've renamed and expanded my lists.

• Potent emetics
• Tissue-thin bad faith
• Foolish timewasters
• Beneath contempt
• Odious nonsense-spewers
• Confederate gravy-eaters
• Toe-faced stenchweasels
• Hilariously inept lackwits
• Probably bots
• Thick as two short planks
• Raving conspiracists
• Sociopath climate deniers
• Dim bulb centrists
• Inept MAGA trolls
• Red scare bedwetters

I get the feeling some people could end up on, well, nearly all of those lists.

Filed Under: colossal assholes, content moderation, content moderation at scale, cory doctorow, trolls
Companies: twitter

Authors Take Copyright So Seriously They Hides Jokes In Their Copyright Notices

from the lulz dept

Were you to hear from the lobbying groups for the major book publishers on the topic of copyright, their answers are generally to push for longer terms, stricter anti-piracy measures, and the most draconian reading of copyright law possible. Groups like The Authors Guild have been firm in their stances that copyright is the only thing that keeps authors in any kind of business, so important is it to their livelihoods. One would think, therefore, that all authors of books would likewise take copyright very, very seriously.

Fortunately, for those of us that appreciate irreverent humor, not so much.

When my first couple novels came out, I lobbied to add some kind of notation about "fair use" and "limitations and exceptions to copyright" on the copyright notice page and was told not even to try because legal would never allow even the slightest variance from the boilerplate; apparently Steve Stack is better connected than I am, because his book 21st Century Dodos, has a copyright notice that is full of whimsy and gags, as Rebecca discovered and documented.

The entire thread is a fun read, and we'll get to other authors that do this sort of thing in a moment, but the whole thing kicks off with Stack's copyright notice on one of his books.

In case you can't read that or click through to the tweet, the bottom photos are of Stack's copyright notices. They are mostly boilerplate, save for these fun exceptions:

Steve Stack asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work, and woe betide anyone who suggests otherwise

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library, whatever that means

The other image is more of the same, except too long for me to type out entirely. That said, to get an idea of its flavor, it includes lines such as "No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, cookie jar or spare room... Unless you want to write the whole thing out in green crayon, in which case feel free." and "This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, carried across the country by relay, fired into space, turned upside down, eaten... On pain of death."

You get the idea. That idea being that it doesn't seem like the author is taking copyright all that seriously. And he's not alone, as it turns out. Down the thread, another tweet points out that author Dave Eggers has a habit for this sort of thing as well.

Again, read the whole thing, but the opening paragraph is tasty enough that I will quote it below in case you cannot see it.

First published 2000 by Simon & Schuster, New York, a division of a larger and more powerful company called Viacom Inc., which is wealthier and more populous than eighteen of the fifty states of America, all of Central America, and all of the former Soviet Republic combined and tripled. That said, no matter how big such companies are, and how many things they own, or how much money they have or make or control, their influence over the daily lives and hearts of individuals, and thus, like ninety-nine percent of what is done by official people in cities like Washington, or Moscow, of Sao Paulo or Auckland, their effect on the short, fraught lives of human beings who limp around and sleep and dream of flying through bloodstreams, who love the smell of rubber cement and think of space travel while having intercourse, is very very small, and so hardly worth worrying about.

Copyright © David (Dave) Eggers 2000

Height: 5'11"; Weight: 170; Eyes: blue; Hair: Brown; Hands: chubbier than one would expect; Allergies: only to dander; Place on sexual-orientation scale, with one being perfectly straight, and 10 being perfectly gay: 3

It goes on from there.

Now, none of this is to suggest that these authors have any dislike of copyright law. In fact, I scoured the internet for comments either might have made on the subject of copyright and couldn't find a thing. Which sort of leaves the literary graffiti both left in their books' copyright notices as their only comment on the topic at all.

And, while it cannot be said that this defacing of their own rights is dismissive of those rights entirely, it certainly does suggest both that these authors don't take the subject quite as seriously as groups like The Authors Guild and that they have a fantastic sense of humor.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright notices, cory doctorow, dave eggers, jokes

The End Of The Open Internet: Cory Doctorow's Op-Ed From The Future

from the let's-hope-it-doesn't-come-to-this dept

The NY Times is running an "Op-Eds From the Future" series, which is a creative idea. In a recent one, Cory Doctorow matched the theme perfectly by highlighting what world looks like without an open internet, when companies are forced to monitor and filter everything. The point he's making is that, especially with changing laws in the EU and some of the proposals in the US, the liability for hosting content will become too great, and we'll shift from an internet that is open for communmications to one that is a "broacast" world of carefully vetted and fully "licensed" content. His title makes the premise clear: I Shouldn’t Have to Publish This in The New York Times.

Ten years ago, I could have published this on my personal website, or shared it on one of the big social media platforms. But that was before the United States government decided to regulate both the social media platforms and blogging sites as if they were newspapers, making them legally responsible for the content they published.

The move was spurred on by an unholy and unlikely coalition of media companies crying copyright; national security experts wringing their hands about terrorism; and people who were dismayed that our digital public squares had become infested by fascists, harassers and cybercriminals. Bit by bit, the legal immunity of the platforms was eroded — from the judges who put Facebook on the line for the platform’s inaction during the Provo Uprising to the lawmakers who amended section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in a bid to get Twitter to clean up its Nazi problem.

He goes through the inevitable progression of events in a world without Section 230, in which various countries enact stricter and stricter laws, and the liability burdens become increasingly too great on companies, leading them to ramp up automated filters that don't work very well, and then nothing works right, especially if you're discussing a serious topic:

The platforms and personal websites are fine if you want to talk about sports, relate your kids’ latest escapades or shop. But if you want to write something about how the platforms and government legislation can’t tell the difference between sex trafficking and sex, nudity and pornography, terrorism investigations and terrorism itself or copyright infringement and parody, you’re out of luck. Any one of those keywords will give the filters an incurable case of machine anxiety — but all of them together? Forget it.

And the real kicker, none of that automation solved any of the "issues" that lawmakers insisted they were solving in the first place. And the key point in all of this: in deciding that bad stuff on the internet was the fault of big internet companies, you inevitably lock in those giants:

But instead, we decided to vest the platforms with statelike duties to punish them for their domination. In doing so, we cemented that domination. Only the largest companies can afford the kinds of filters we’ve demanded of them, and that means that any would-be trustbuster who wants to break up the companies and bring them to heel first must unwind the mesh of obligations we’ve ensnared the platforms in and build new, state-based mechanisms to perform those duties.

It's a good, fun, readable vision of the world we're currently heading for based on EU regulations and some of the nonsense being suggested regarding Section 230 today.

The really annoying part is how little those who are pushing these regulations seem to realize what they're doing. Everyone is so focused on Section 230 these days as if it's the only "lever" they have to pull in regards to their complaints (some of which are totally reasonable) about the big internet companies. Very few of them bother to consider how all of this plays out -- which is why it's great that Cory is doing so. Of course, those who don't want to recognize what will happen don't seem to care. I've seen a few people dismissing the story as "fiction," which kind of misses the point. Hilariously, they're doing so on social media platforms enabled by the laws that these people are now trying to kill.

Filed Under: broadcast, communications, cory doctorow, filters, gatekeepers, intermediary liability, op-ed from the future, permission

Scooter Company Bird Sends Absolutely Bullshit Copyright Threat Letter To Cory Doctorow For Reporting On Modifying Scooters

from the someone-deserves-to-be-fired dept

Of all the stupid things a lawyer can do, it's difficult to think of many more stupid than to send a totally and completely bogus copyright infringement claim, arguing (incorrectly) a violation of DMCA section 1201 (the anti-circumvention part of the DMCA) to Cory Doctorow. Among many other things, Cory is one of the leading voices about the problems of 1201 and has fought for years to dismantle it. And thus a case that actually challenged 1201 might be interesting, but in this case, there's no valid 1201 case at all.

As explained in an EFF blog post, Bird, one of the bigger app-based scooter rental services out there, sent a completely bullshit "Notice of Claimed Infringement" to Doctorow and the parent company of Boing Boing, Happy Mutants. Over what? Over a BoingBoing post from last month that reports on how people are offering $30 conversion kits to turn a former Bird scooter into one that you yourself can use. Specifically, the article talked about how many Bird scooters were being impounded, and could potentially be sold off at some point to people who might want to convert one on the cheap into a personal electric scooter.

The letter--sent by Bird's "Sr. Corporate Counsel", Linda Kwak (whose experience appears to be focused on employment law, not copyright law)--makes a number of ludicrous claims. Thankfully, Doctorow and BoingBoing have EFF to back them up and respond forcefully to this kind of threat, with a response written by EFF senior staff attorney Kit Walsh. Here's a snippet:

First of all, Mr. Doctorow is well within his First-Amendment-protected rights to report on the existence of these conversion kits and their use. Mr. Doctorow’s article does not encourage any form of illegal conduct, but even if it did, the First Amendment does not permit liability based solely on encouraging others to break the law. Even in cases where a person advocates violent crimes, the First Amendment only permits that advocacy to be punished when it is intended to and likely to imminently cause the lawless act. E.g., Brandenburg v. Ohio, 89 S.Ct. 1827 (1969). The Boing Boing article falls far short of meeting any legal test that would allow a court to impose liability on its author, nor have you identified any basis for doing so. Mr. Doctorow would have had every right to advocate for Bird scooters to be destroyed or stolen; instead he simply reported that they could lawfully be acquired at auction and lawfully modified to function as personal scooters.

Second, you cite the anti-trafficking provisions of 17 USC 1201, alleging that the scooter conversion kits are circumvention devices that violate Section 1201, but that does not appear to be true. Again, Happy Mutants would have every right to report on unlawful conduct or even to encourage it, but here the conduct being described seems entirely within the law.

“Conversion kits” are apparently just replacement motherboards, such as the stock motherboard for the Xiaomi Mijia m365 scooter. Installing the “kit” involves opening the scooter, removing the motherboard containing Bird software, and replacing it with a part that does not contain Bird software. As you note in your letter, the kit “allows the user to replace the Bird code so that users may ride the Bird scooters without using its app.”

It is not an act of circumvention to unplug and discard a motherboard containing unwanted code. Likewise, a part that is used to replace the unwanted board is not a circumvention device -- it substitutes for the part containing proprietary code rather than circumventing technological protection measures that restrict access to the code or prevent infringement. Use of a conversion kit does not appear to involve any access, reproduction, or modification of any Bird code. We are likewise puzzled by your assertion that your copyright in the Bird app provides a basis for a Section 1201 claim against the conversion kits, since they do not appear to interact with the app at all. You have not claimed that the Boing Boing article itself constitutes trafficking, nor could you. It does not offer to sell or traffic in anything but rather reports true, newsworthy facts. Attempting to expand Section 1201 to bar such reporting would fatally exacerbate the First Amendment flaws already inherent in the statute. (Happy Mutants would also be fully within its rights to link to a site such as eBay where the kits can be purchased, but, contrary to your assertion, the article does not contain such a link.)

An assertion of Section 1201 is on especially shaky ground when it seeks to suppress activity that does not infringe copyright, such as fair uses. The Librarian of Congress, overseeing the Copyright Office, has repeatedly exempted from Section 1201’s circumvention ban the noninfringing repair and modification of motorized land vehicles (such as electric scooters), because barring those repairs and modifications would be unjustified and harmful to the public. Those repairs and modifications actually do involve circumventing access controls in order to inspect and modify copyrighted code, unlike the conversion kits at issue here, and they nonetheless are noninfringing, fair uses.

As Walsh further explains in the EFF blog post, this really is incredibly crazy, given all of Doctorow's work on 1201:

Bird probably did not know that the journalist who wrote the post, Cory Doctorow, has been reporting on and challenging this overly broad law and its harmful consequences, both at Boing Boing and as a Special Adviser on EFF’s Apollo 1201 project, for years. They likely also didn’t know EFF has launched litigation to invalidate the law in its entirety and, in the meantime, has successfully pushed for numerous exemptions to the law -- including one that specifically permits repair and modification of motorized land vehicles (for instance, say, an electric scooter).

As fun as it might have been (again... fun for us) to have a legal fight about the nuances of Section 1201, it's pretty clear here that there's no claim to be made. The fundamental reason Bird doesn't have a claim is that Section 1201's ban on trafficking concerns products that circumvent either access controls or use controls on a copyrighted work. To simplify a bit, it concerns a device that cracks a technological measure in order to access or make an infringing use of a copyrighted work.

To turn a Bird scooter into a regular personal scooter, you just open it up and replace the motherboard that contains Bird code with a different motherboard (you could even use the official stock motherboard for this model of scooter, the Xiaomi Mijia m365). You literally throw away the copy of the Bird code residing on the unwanted motherboard, rather than accessing or copying or modifying it. We have long had serious concerns that Section 1201 can be abused to block repair and tinkering. But while the law is overbroad, it is not so broad that it prohibits you from simply replacing a motherboard.

And, of course, all this really does is call that much more attention to Doctorow's original article, and the possibilities for effectively getting your very own electric scooter on the cheap. It is utterly bizarre that anyone at Bird thought this was a good idea. Who knows if this was just the Bird lawyer going through the motions or someone else at the company directing her to do this, but at some point, companies really need to think more carefully about sending out the usual bullshit nastygrams, as they can really come back to bite a company.

Filed Under: anti-circumvention, copyright, cory doctorow, dmca, dmca 1201, drm, right to repair, scooters
Companies: bird, boingboing, eff

'Catalog Of Missing Devices' Compiles The Useful Tech Products DRM Is Preventing Us From Owning

from the DRM:-if-it's-fixed,-break-it dept

What has DRM taken from the public? Well, mainly it's the concept of ownership. Once an item is purchased, it should be up to the customer to use it how they want to. DRM alters the terms of the deal, limiting customers' options and, quite often, routing them towards proprietary, expensive add-ons and repairs.

But the question "What would we have without DRM?" is a bit more slippery. The answers are speculative fiction. This isn't to say the answers are unimportant. It's just that it's tough to nail down conspicuous absences. The nature of DRM is that you don't notice it until it prevents you from doing something you want to do.

DRM -- and its enabler, the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA -- ties customers to printer companies' ink. It ties Keurig coffee fans to Keurig-brand pods. It prevents farmers from repairing their machinery and prevents drivers from tinkering with their cars. It prevents the creation of backups of digital and physical media. It can even keep your cats locked out of their pricey restroom.

To better show how DRM is stifling innovation, Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow and the EFF have teamed up to produce a catalog of "missing devices": useful tech that could exist, but only without DRM.

“The law that is supposed to restrict copying has instead been misused to crack down on competition, strangling a future’s worth of gadgets in their cradles,” said EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow. “But it’s hard to notice what isn’t there. We’re aiming to fix that with this Catalog of Missing Devices. It’s a collection of tools, services, and products that could have been, and should have been, but never were.”

At this point, the collaboration has produced eight nonexistent tech advancements, but the EFF and Doctorow are still collecting and vetting submissions. From a firmware patch that turns Vapid Spyware Barbie into a one-way font of useful information to locking out snooping vehicle black boxes, the Catalog of Missing Items has something for everyone who's ever taped a Kuerig barcode onto a third-party coffee pod.

One of the biggest losers of the DRM/DMCA arms race is fan subtitles. Amateur creators of subtitles for foreign films have found themselves subjected to multiple DMCA notices, if not actual criminal proceedings. While it's understandable some production companies don't have the budget to produce dozens of different subtitles (or localize games), it's baffling the response is usually to harm people who are helping others. The problem is that adding subtitles means bypassing copyright protection and creating a new file with the subtitles or translation attached. Companies often view this as no different that regular old piracy, despite the added value created by fans of the content.

One of the hypothetical products offered by the "Catalog of Missing Devices" solves this. Called "Panfluent" by its creator, Nicola Ginzler, the software performs machine translation for any language, allowing all internet users to view/hear anything, almost anywhere, in their native language. It also would allow users to suggest better translations and have those added to Panfluent's databases. It would work across multiple platforms and unlock devices to prevent DRM from getting the way.

Another suggestion would correct a major annoyance with e-readers. It would allow users to select any font they want on any e-reader, freeing them from the "official" fonts handed to them by the manufacturer. This would greatly aid those who love reading, but have trouble doing so with normal e-readers. Default font choices seldom work out for sufferers of dyslexia or other cognitive disabilities. (Another addition to the catalog would force all e-readers to deploy text-to-speech.)

Other suggestions include freeing 3-D printers from proprietary supplies and turning a DVR into a meme factory by providing templates and the ability to capture any image at any time from recordings or live TV.

These are the sort of innovations we won't be seeing as long as anti-circumvention laws remain in place. DRM lock-in helps no one but the sellers of items and content and prevents purchasers from making full use of products and content they've paid for. The law criminalizes tinkering with certain purchases and sets up roadblocks for security researchers. It limits the usefulness of products and further restricts people with already limited access to content, like dyslexics or residents of countries producers have no interest in serving. Worse, every few years the few exemptions granted must be begged for again, lest they disappear forever. It's a bad law making the world a worse place and cedes far too much control to sellers, rather than those keeping them in business.

Filed Under: catalog of missing devices, copyright, cory doctorow, dmca, dmca 1201, drm, innovation

EFF Resigns From W3C After DRM In HTML Is Approved In Secret Vote

from the disappointing dept

This is not a huge surprise, but it's still disappointing to find out that the W3C has officially approved putting DRM into HTML 5 in the form of Encrypted Media Extensions (EME). Some will insist that EME is not technically DRM, but it is the standardizing of how DRM will work in HTML going forward. As we've covered for years, there was significant concern over this plan, but when it was made clear that the MPAA (a relatively new W3C member) required DRM in HTML, and Netflix backed it up strongly, the W3C made it fairly clear that there was no real debate to be had on the issue. Recognizing that DRM was unavoidable, EFF proposed a fairly straightforward covenant, that those participating agree not to use the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA (DMCA 1201) to go after security researchers, who cracked DRM in EME. The W3C already has similar covenants regarding patents, so this didn't seem like a heavy lift. Unfortunately, this proposal was more or less dismissed by the pro-DRM crowd as being an attempt to relitigate the question of DRM itself (which was not true).

Earlier this year, Tim Berners-Lee, who had the final say on things, officially put his stamp of approval on EME without a covenant, leading the EFF to appeal the decision. That appeal has now failed. Unfortunately, the votes on this were kept entirely secret:

So much for transparency.

In Bryan Lunduke's article about this at Network World, he notes that despite the W3C saying that it had asked members if they wanted their votes to be public, with all declining, Cory Doctorow (representing EFF) says that actually EFF was slapped on the wrist for asking W3C members if they would record their votes publicly:

“The W3C did not, to my knowledge as [Advisory Committee] rep, ask members whether they would be OK with having their votes disclosed in this latest poll, and if they had, EFF would certainly have been happy to have its vote in the public record. We feel that this is a minimal step towards transparency in the standards-setting that affects billions of users and will redound for decades to come.”

“By default, all W3C Advisory Committee votes are ‘member-confidential.’ Previously, EFF has secured permission from members to disclose their votes. We have also been censured by the W3C leadership for disclosing even vague sense of a vote (for example, approximate proportions).”

It was eventually revealed that out of 185 members participating in the vote, 108 voted for DRM, 57 voted against, and 20 abstained.

And while the W3C insisted it couldn't reveal who voted for or against the proposal... it had no problem posting "testimonials" from the MPAA, the RIAA, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Microsoft and a few others talking about just how awesome DRM in HTML will be. Incredibly, Netflix even forgot the bullshit talking point that "EME is not DRM" and directly emphasized how "integration of DRM into web browsers delivers improved performance, battery life, reliability, security and privacy." Right, but during this debate we kept getting yelled at by people who said EME is not DRM. So nice of you to admit that was all a lie.

In response to all of this, Cory Doctorow has authored a scathing letter, having the EFF resign from the W3C. It's worth reading.

The W3C is a body that ostensibly operates on consensus. Nevertheless, as the coalition in support of a DRM compromise grew and grew — and the large corporate members continued to reject any meaningful compromise — the W3C leadership persisted in treating EME as topic that could be decided by one side of the debate. In essence, a core of EME proponents was able to impose its will on the Consortium, over the wishes of a sizeable group of objectors — and every person who uses the web. The Director decided to personally override every single objection raised by the members, articulating several benefits that EME offered over the DRM that HTML5 had made impossible.

But those very benefits (such as improvements to accessibility and privacy) depend on the public being able to exercise rights they lose under DRM law — which meant that without the compromise the Director was overriding, none of those benefits could be realized, either. That rejection prompted the first appeal against the Director in W3C history.

In our campaigning on this issue, we have spoken to many, many members' representatives who privately confided their belief that the EME was a terrible idea (generally they used stronger language) and their sincere desire that their employer wasn't on the wrong side of this issue. This is unsurprising. You have to search long and hard to find an independent technologist who believes that DRM is possible, let alone a good idea. Yet, somewhere along the way, the business values of those outside the web got important enough, and the values of technologists who built it got disposable enough, that even the wise elders who make our standards voted for something they know to be a fool's errand.

We believe they will regret that choice. Today, the W3C bequeaths an legally unauditable attack-surface to browsers used by billions of people. They give media companies the power to sue or intimidate away those who might re-purpose video for people with disabilities. They side against the archivists who are scrambling to preserve the public record of our era. The W3C process has been abused by companies that made their fortunes by upsetting the established order, and now, thanks to EME, they’ll be able to ensure no one ever subjects them to the same innovative pressures.

This is a disappointing day for the web, and a black mark on Tim Berners-Lee's reputation and legacy of stewardship over it.

Filed Under: copyright, cory doctorow, drm, eme, security, tim berners-lee, transparency
Companies: drm, eff, mpaa, nbc universal, netflix, riaa