YouTube Takes Down European Parliament Video On Stopping Torture For 'Violating Community Guidelines'

from the really-now? dept

Back in 2008, then Senator Joe Lieberman went on a ridiculous pro-censorship campaign, demanding that YouTube take down any "terrorist" videos. For reasons I still don't understand, YouTube complied. As a result, watchdogs documenting Syrian atrocities had them censored from YouTube, because YouTube determined them to be in "violation" of its guidelines in publishing "shocking and offensive videos."

That was a few years ago, and it seems like the problem has only gotten worse -- as have the ridiculous calls for YouTube and other platforms to be the giant censor in the digital sky. The latest victim? Would you believe it's the European Parliament itself? Marietje Schaake, a really wonderful Member of the European Parliament (and a Techdirt reader), tweeted that the video she had posted of a European Parliament debate on "anti-torture" was taken down for "violating community guidelines." Really. As you can see, her account was assessed a "strike" for posting a video of a European Parliament debate about torture. And it notes that if she receives two more such strikes, she may lose her account. Of course, it's quite likely that this was some sort of automated system trying to stop videos on "torture" or somesuch, but really, this is the kind of thing that should keep people worried about all these demands to make platforms censors of "terrorism" or other "bad" stuff. You inevitably get these types of errors. And while it's likely that with enough attention, YouTube will magically reverse its ridiculous position on this video, not everyone is able to get that kind of attention. It makes you wonder what other content is getting blocked because some algorithm, or some clueless individual, can't be bothered to understand what's happening.

Filed Under: automated takedowns, censorship, european parliament, marietje schaake, platforms, terrorism, torture, youtube
Companies: youtube

Snowden On Going Through 'Proper Channels': Reporting Concerns Gets You Flagged As A 'Troublemaker'

from the good-thing-he-decided-to-go-above-the-NSA's-head dept

The NSA defenders who label Ed Snowden a "traitor" (senators, congressmen and any number of former intelligence officials) often assert the whistleblower had an opportunity to use "proper channels" rather than take the route he chose: leaking documents to journalists.

Snowden's written testimony to the European Parliament, which was covered here earlier by Glyn Moody, includes in-depth responses to those who still believe he could have handled this differently. When asked if there are "adequate procedures to signal wrongdoing" inside the agency, Snowden had this to say:

Unfortunately not. The culture within the US Intelligence Community is such that reporting serious concerns about the legality or propriety of programs is much more likely to result in your being flagged as a troublemaker than to result in substantive reform...

[As noted here earlier, Snowden's negative writeup while with the CIA was a result of him bringing a security flaw in the agency's software to a supervisor's attention. He fixed the flaw and was rewarded with a critical note in his file written by the person he originally brought the problem to.]

In my personal experience, repeatedly raising concerns about legal and policy matters with my co-workers and superiors resulted in two kinds of responses. The first were well-meaning but hushed warnings not to "rock the boat," for fear of the sort of retaliation that befell former NSA whistleblowers like Wiebe, Binney, and Drake…

The second were similarly well-meaning but more pointed suggestions, typically from senior officials, that we should let the issue be someone else's problem. Even among the most senior individuals to whom I reported my concerns, no one at NSA could ever recall an instance where an official complaint had resulted in an unlawful program being ended, but there was a unanimous desire to avoid being associated with such a complaint in any form.

The world's foremost intelligence agency is nothing more than the world's most secretive cubicle farm, staffed with supervisors more interested in coasting towards retirement at the helm of the placid USS CYA then actually addressing an employee's concerns.

And it's not as though Snowden didn't make an honest effort to utilize the proper channels.

I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than ten distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them. As an employee of a private company rather than a direct employee of the US government, I was not protected by US whistleblower laws, and I would not have been protected from retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about lawbreaking in accordance with the recommended process.

The loophole in whistleblower protection is in the process of being closed by sympathetic court decisions. Courts are granting contractors the same protection as US government employees. But this "protection" is ultimately hardly worth the paper the decision is printed on. Intelligence agencies are still excluded from this protection, and the protection itself is highly suspect. Ultimately, everything runs through the Obama administration -- the same administration that has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other administrations combined. Snowden harbors no illusions that the US government will ever take him back on amicable terms.

There has not yet been any substantive whistleblower reform in the US, and unfortunately my government has taken a number of disproportionate and persecutory actions against me. US government officials have declared me guilty of crimes in advance of any trial, they've called for me to be executed or assassinated in private and openly in the press, they revoked my passport and left me stranded in a foreign transit zone for six weeks, and even used NATO to ground the presidential plane of Evo Morales - the leader of Bolivia - on hearing that I might attempt to seek and enjoy asylum in Latin America.

As they say, there's no "there" there. The proper channels Snowden supposedly should have used were either a) sealed off by insular officials who preferred career longevity to "rocking the boat," or b) would have resulted in prosecution thanks to a lack of whistleblower protection.

Let's not forget that one of Snowden's "proper channels" publicly compared the whistleblower to spies who sold government secrets to foreign operatives, called him a "thief" and referred to the journalists who ended up with NSA documents as "agents" in control of their "handler." When not smearing the ex-NSA contractor, this "proper channel" said he would have met Snowden's concerns with talking points and meetings with intelligence subcommittees -- the same subcommittees that have done nothing but circle the wagons around the agency since the leaks began.

Suggesting Snowden could have handled this through "proper channels" is to suggest that the NSA's overreach should never have come to light or, at best, that Snowden should be prosecuted for whistleblowing. "Proper channels" in the intelligence community are an illusion. Snowden found this out firsthand and these responses prompted his eventual document heist. The government really has no one to blame but itself for the situation it finds itself in.

Filed Under: edward snowden, european parliament, leak, nsa

European Commission: ACTA Is Dead, Long Live ACTA?

from the hidden-in-plain-sight dept

The first six months of 2012 saw Europeans taking to the streets in order to kill off ACTA in the European Union. Against all the odds, they succeeded in that aim, as the European Parliament voted to reject ACTA on 4 July last year. That defeat has certainly been burned into the memories of Karel de Gucht, the EU Commissioner responsible for negotiating first ACTA and now TAFTA/TTIP. When he was asked whether the latter might see ACTA sneak in by the backdoor, here's what he replied:

"ACTA, one of the nails in my coffin. I'm not going to reopen that discussion. Really, I mean, I am not a masochist. I'm not planning to do that.

If the Commission advances new basic legislation, which I think she should, we will revisit the question, but I'm not going to do this by the back door".

So you might think that ACTA is definitively dead and buried in the EU. But then along comes a new free trade agreement, this time between the EU and Singapore, which has the following section, Article 11.44, paragraph 2 (pdf):

In determining the amount of damages for infringement of intellectual property rights, a Party's judicial authorities shall have the authority to consider, inter alia, any legitimate measure of value the right holder submits, which may include lost profits, the value of the infringed goods or services measured by the market price, or the suggested retail price.

Those with good memories may recall that something similar was to be found in ACTA, and that it was one of the problematic areas that led the European Parliament to reject the treaty. In fact, it's not similar, it's word-for-word identical with Article 9, paragraph 1 of ACTA (pdf). And it's not the only section that's been cut-and-pasted from ACTA: several other paragraphs are also direct copies.

This raises an interesting question. At the moment, the EU-Singapore FTA has only been "initialled": that means it must still be approved by the European Commission, the Council of Ministers representing the member nations, and the European Parliament. So will the EU's MEPs reject the new trade agreement because it represents ACTA by the backdoor -- or at least a part of it? That seems unlikely.

But if the European Parliament does pass the EU-Singapore FTA, de Gucht might then argue that the same sections from ACTA can now be pasted into TAFTA/TTIP, since they are no longer problematic. And if he does so, perhaps he will be tempted to include a few more sections from ACTA, on the grounds that he is doing nothing "by the backdoor", but doing it in the full view of everyone....

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Filed Under: acta, europe, european commission, european parliament, karel de gucht, singapore, trade agreements

What Happens If File Sharing Can Also Be Prosecuted As Trademark Infringement?

from the messy dept

In the arguments over ACTA, one criticism seemed widely accepted: that it tries to bundle together two quite different challenges -- tackling counterfeit goods, like fake medicines, and dealing with unauthorized file sharing. One popular suggestion was that ACTA should be split in two in order to handle those separately – for example, David Martin, the politician who played a key role in convincing the European Parliament to reject ACTA this week, supports this approach.

But a case reported on TorrentFreak suggests that the distinction between the two worlds is starting to blur:

A New York federal court has ordered a rare default judgment in favor of John Wiley & Sons, one of the world’s largest book publishers. Robert Carpenter from Poughkeepsie, New York, has been ordered to pay the publisher $7,000 in damages for sharing a copy of "WordPress All-in-One For Dummies" on BitTorrent. According to Judge William Pauley, the man is guilty of both copyright and trademark infringement.

The judge specified that $2,000 of those damages were "for Carpenter’s counterfeiting of Wiley’s Trademarks". As TorrentFreak notes:

To our knowledge, this is the first time that sharing files on BitTorrent has been viewed as counterfeiting, a description that’s usually reserved for fake goods sold as the real deal.

That's troubling, because it would seem to open the door for anti-counterfeiting measures aimed at tackling serious trademark infringement to be applied routinely to P2P sharing of copyright files simply because they are exact copies of originals. That, in its turn, would mean that separating ACTA's measures against counterfeit goods from those dealing with online infringement might not be enough to solve the treaty's problems, since the former would still apply to the digital world. Yet another reason to bin ACTA completely and to start again from scratch.

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Filed Under: acta, bittorrent, counterfeiting, david martin, european parliament, file sharing, robert carpenter

ACTA's Back: European Commission Trying To Sneak In Worst Parts Using Canada-EU Trade Agreement As A Trojan Horse

from the not-dead-yet dept

Even in the face of a resounding rejection of ACTA by the European Parliament last week, the European Commission seems determined to keep pushing for its eventual adoption. Techdirt noted some ways in which it might try to do that, but an important article by Michael Geist lays out what seems to be an alternative approach that is already close to fruition:

According to recently leaked documents [pdf], the EU plans to use the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA), which is nearing its final stages of negotiation, as a backdoor mechanism to implement the ACTA provisions.

Here's how that would work:

The European Commission strategy appears to be to use CETA as the new ACTA, burying its provisions in a broader Canadian trade agreement with the hope that the European Parliament accepts the same provisions it just rejected with the ACTA framework. If successful, it would likely then argue that ACTA poses no new concerns since the same rules were approved within the Canadian trade deal.

What's extraordinary is how slavishly the CETA IP chapter follows ACTA -- Geist's post provides a table comparing the two in detail, and for many key issues, CETA adopts ACTA's wording exactly.

This includes requiring the promotion of "cooperative efforts" that could see ISPs taking down content on a "voluntary" basis; the use of the meaningless term "fair process"; disclosure of a subscriber's information "expeditiously" upon accusation of infringement; civil damages that consider "any legitimate measure of value that may be submitted by the right holder, including lost profits"; the use of the vague term "commercial scale" for both civil and criminal enforcement measures; and criminal liability for "aiding and abetting" infringement.

What that means is that practically all of the key stumbling blocks that persuaded the European Parliament to vote against ACTA are also present in CETA. As Geist observes;

The backdoor ACTA approach creates enormous risks for Canada's trade ambitions. Given the huge anti-ACTA movement, the Canada-EU trade deal could face widespread European opposition with CETA becoming swept up in similar protests.

After all, if those proposals were problematic in ACTA, they are equally problematic for CETA, and so it seems likely that the European Parliament will vote against the entire Canada-EU trade deal just as it threw out ACTA. The obvious solution is to remove the intellectual property chapter from CETA altogether to avoid this risk. Geist points out there's an important precedent for this:

the U.S. and EU recently announced their own plans to negotiate a trade deal but agreed to keep intellectual property issues out of the talks. If CETA becomes known as ACTA II, the future of the Canada-EU trade deal may hinge on adopting a similar approach.

That would not only be a good idea for CETA, it would be sensible for all trade agreements, since it would return them to their original aim of promoting trade between nations, not regulating the domestic laws governing things like copyright.

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Filed Under: acta, canada, ceta, european parliament

European Parliament Declares Its Independence From The European Commission With A Massive Rejection Of ACTA. Now What?

from the power-to-the-people dept

In a plenary vote today, the European Parliament has rejected ACTA by 478 votes to 39, with 165 abstentions. That followed a failed attempt by the right-of-center EPP Group to call for a postponement. Although the final result was not totally unexpected, since the signs had been pointing this way for a time, it nonetheless represents a huge victory for campaigners who had more or less given up hope of stopping ACTA in Europe even a few months ago. So the question now becomes: what are the ramifications?

In its closing speech, the European Commission repeated its statement that it would wait for the European Court of Justice's opinion on the compatibility of ACTA with the EU's laws, even if the vote went against it. It also hinted that it might then call for another vote on ACTA in the European Parliament. Whether that was simply a bluff, or whether it will go ahead with this seemingly pointless exercise, is unclear.

David Martin, the EU parliamentarian charged with handling the ACTA vote, said afterwards in a press conference that he did not believe the Commission could simply re-submit ACTA in its present form. Changing ACTA would require agreement from the other ACTA signatories, which is likely to be hard to obtain, but even then Martin was skeptical that ACTA was the right way to address the problem of counterfeit goods. Moreover, the sheer size of the majority against ACTA today means that the Commission can't realistically hope that next time things will go much better. Instead, Martin suggested splitting ACTA into two new and quite distinct treaties -- one dealing with physical counterfeits, the other with online infringement.

Martin also said that he believed that ACTA is dead, and not only in the European Union. For example, he noted that Australia's politicians were having second thoughts even before the EU vote. If, in the wake of today's resounding rejection, Australia also refuses to ratify the treaty, it will leave ACTA looking tattered and hardly the exemplary globe-spanning agreement its supporters have been pushing for. And that's assuming that the US administration can resolve the issues surrounding its own approval of the treaty, and can muster enough ratifications among other signatories so that ACTA comes into force. And as people are already pointing out, if ACTA does collapse, TPP might be next.

The true measure of the effect of the European Parliament's rejection of ACTA remains to be seen; but two things are already clear. The first is a new recognition that European citizens not only care deeply about key issues like freedom and privacy, but that they are keen to engage with politicians on these and related subjects, as the President of the European Parliament acknowledged in a statement after the ACTA vote:

The debate on ACTA demonstrated the existence of European public opinion that transcends national borders. All over Europe, people were engaged in protests and debates. The mobilisation of public opinion was unprecedented. As the President of the European Parliament, I am committed to dialogue with citizens and to make Europe more democratic and understandable.

The second point was noted by David Martin in a blog post published shortly after ACTA's defeat:

This is a historic day in terms of European politics. For the first time the European Parliament has used the powers granted by the Lisbon Treaty to reject an International Trade Agreement. The Commission and the Council will now be aware that they cannot overrun the Parliament, which represents and defends citizens' rights. This vote represents true democracy in action and the coming of age of the European Parliament.

In other words, the rejection of ACTA by the EU is not just a victory for the activists who took to the streets of Europe earlier this year, and the huge numbers of people who contacted their politicians to express their concern: this is also a victory for the European Parliament, which hitherto has been little more than a rubber stamp for the European Commission's proposals.

That has important consequences for the future, since it means that the Commission will need to be more circumspect when dealing with the Parliament. That, in its turn, is likely to lead to more transparency and participation by European citizens in the process of crafting new laws and treaties. In particular, it means that whatever the European Commission comes up with as a response to this major defeat over ACTA, it will not be able to assume that it can always get what it wants. Today's subtle but important shift in power within European politics will also be felt at the international level, since the Commission's negotiators will no longer be able to conduct meetings behind closed doors that fail to take into account what the European Parliament -- and ultimately the people of Europe -- are willing to accept.

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Filed Under: acta, australia, david martin, european commission, european court of justice, european parliament, tpp

Reminder: The Case For Copyright Reform: Techdirt Book Club For June

from the read-up dept

We mentioned this earlier in the month, but just wanted to pass on a reminder that the June "Techdirt Book Club" book is The Case for Copyright Reform, by Rick Falkvinge (founder of the first Pirate Party) and Christian Engstrom (Member of European Parliament). Both Christian and Rick will be joining us for an online discussion/Q&A on June 29th at 11am PT, and I'm sure it will be a spirited discussion. The book is, of course, available for free download at the link above if you haven't yet had a chance to read it.

Filed Under: book club, christian engstrom, european parliament, pirate party, rick falkvinge

Fifth EU Committee Recommends Rejection Of ACTA By European Parliament

from the how-many-times-do-we-have-to-say-no? dept

Another major milestone has been achieved in the push to get ACTA rejected by the EU: a fifth parliamentary committee has recommended that the European Parliament should refuse to ratify it when it is put to the vote on July 4th, effectively killing it in Europe. The other committees – on legal affairs, civil liberties, industry and international development – recommended rejection a few weeks ago, but today's vote by the international trade committee (INTA) was seen as the most important.

That was reflected during the vote. For example, the hall in which the meeting was held was unusually full, with a large contingent from the press. Unexpectedly, an EU politician who is not aligned with the main groupings turned up to vote, adding to the uncertainty about the final result.

The main INTA report recommended that the European Parliament should reject ACTA, but three amendments were tabled: two to accept ACTA immediately, and one to recommend waiting until after the European Court of Justice had handed down its judgment -- something not expected for a year or two.

At the last minute, the first two amendments were withdrawn, leaving only the call for a postponement of the European Parliament vote. This was rejected by the committee; but then somebody pointed out that there were more votes than people -- a problem EU committees have had before. This meant that that the vote had to be taken again, adding to the already-high tension in the meeting, to confirm that the amendment was indeed being rejected.

Finally, the INTA committee voted on the report containing the recommendation to reject ACTA, and passed it by 19 votes to 12. That was a wider margin than expected, but isn't necessarily representative of what will happen in the plenary vote in July. The European Commission will be making one last effort to convince EU politicians to vote for ACTA, and lobbyists will doubtless be out in strength during the next two weeks.

Gaining the support of five EU committees out of five is an extraordinary achievement -- six months ago, most commentators expected ACTA to sail through the European ratification process without much trouble. European politicians themselves have said that this change of heart is entirely due to the massive wave of protests against ACTA, both on the streets and in the form of thousands of emails and phone calls.

Although the battle is not over yet, it will be hugely significant if such citizen action does succeed in stopping ACTA, since it would send a message to politicians that the views of the public cannot be ignored when it comes to such major policy decisions about the Internet. In this respect, it would complement the similar revolt over SOPA and PIPA in the US -- something that made the current string of European victories against ACTA possible.

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Filed Under: acta, european commission, european parliament, european union, inta, pipa, sopa

Pirate Bay Verdict May Actually Lead To Pirate Party Official Joining European Parliament

from the you've-started-a-movement dept

While the entertainment industry still really seems to think that the disputed verdict in the Pirate Bay trial was a victory, most folks who can look beyond the immediate ruling have recognized what a horrific loss this has been for the industry. On the technology side, it's done nothing of importance. Even if The Pirate Bay is eventually shut down, there are at least a dozen other sites to step in and take up the slack. On the business model side, shutting down The Pirate Bay will do nothing to fix a seriously broken business model. But, perhaps most important of all, the industry is pushing more and more people over the edge, from indifferent to the industry, to actively working against the industry. I expected the uselessness of the verdict when it came to tech and business models, but I didn't realize that it would energize people on the political side as well.

There's been lots of talk about how the verdict massively increased the number of Swedes joining The Pirate Party, but the big question is whether or not it will be enough people to make a difference, and will they actually follow through. The initial showings are impressive. A new political poll shows that the party's popularity has grown tremendously, to the point that if a vote were held today, The Pirate Party would gain a seat in the European Parliament. It's now become the second largest party for voters in the 18 to 29 age group. This isn't just a random fringe group that the industry (and other politicians) can completely dismiss. It is still small, but what's amazing is how the industry's blatant shortsightedness has given rise to an entire political movement that keeps attracting more and more members. It seems likely that the entertainment industry still doesn't realize what sort of backlash it's creating, but at some point, it might want to start paying attention.

Filed Under: europe, european parliament, pirate party, sweden
Companies: the pirate bay

European Parliament Rejects IFPI Plan To Make ISPs Copyright Cops

from the good-for-them dept

There's been a huge lobbying campaign going on throughout much of the world to get local governments to put pressure on ISPs to require them to kick those accused of file sharing off of the internet. It had been worrisome that these efforts actually seemed to be getting some traction in both France and the UK despite vehement opposition from many people. It appears that the opposition has started to get its point of view across. The EU Parliament has now rejected a plan to criminalize file sharing and to implement a "three strikes and you're off the internet" policy. The vote itself isn't binding, but suggests how the EU Parliament feels. While France has already put in place such a law, there was some feeling that France would push to make similar laws enforced European-wide. This vote should put a damper on those plans.

Filed Under: copyright cops, europe, european parliament, france, ifpi, isps
Companies: ifpi