'Deep Fake' Legislation Is On The Way, Threatening Free Speech Protections

from the how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-AI-making-Maria-sing-DJ-Assault-tracks dept

The proliferation of deep fake videos is going to start having an effect on First Amendment protections. Hint: it's not going to make these protections any stronger.

"Deep fake" may be easier to define than "fake news," but that doesn't mean there won't be collateral damage. The issue isn't a new one. Faking reality has been around nearly as long as reality itself. Cheap tools that make this anyone's game is the only thing new. Before we had deep fakes, we had Photoshop and its imitators.

Video used to be the last bulwark of truth. It couldn't be faked easily. But this too has been abused for years. Editing video to make it show what the editor wants it to show is a tactic that has been used for years. Now, however, tools make it possible to put new words in peoples' mouths, as was demonstrated to devastating satirical effect when a video of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was tricked out to make it appear as though Zuckerberg was promising to swallow every user's data and privacy.

This is prompting legislators to act. Concerns over the potential of deep fakes to mislead people or, in some cases, destroy the unwitting participant's reputation, are leading to the production of legislation from people not entirely sure what they're dealing with.

Apparently shaken by a deep fake video of former president Barack Obama calling President Trump a "dipshit" and Housing Secretary Ben Carson "brainwashed," a California assemblyperson is pitching anti-deep fake legislation. Ben Christopher of CalMatters has the details:

“I immediately realized, ‘Wow, this is a technology that plays right into the hands of people who are trying to influence our elections like we saw in 2016,’” said Assemblyman Marc Berman, a Democrat whose district includes Silicon Valley.

So Berman, chair of the Assembly’s election committee, has introduced a bill that would make it illegal to “knowingly or recklessly” share “deceptive audio or visual media” of a political candidate within 60 days of an election “with the intent to injure the candidate’s reputation or to deceive a voter into voting for or against the candidate.”

This bill may be narrowly-crafted to target only perceived election interference, but that still isn't enough to ward off possible Constitutional problems. For one, this law would punish anyone "knowingly" sharing something "deceptive." The problem is the word "deceptive." It doesn't just cover deep fakes that put words in candidates' mouths. It would also cover videos edited to show candidates in a bad light by taking comments or statements out of context. This has never been illegal before. Just because tech is allowing people to do scary new things with video processing tools is no reason to start criminalizing common campaign tactics.

Unsurprisingly, this legislative effort is opposed by the ACLU, EFF, and two major California journalism organizations. The news publishers point out this effort will do damage to protected speech while doing almost nothing to ensure election integrity.

[W]hitney Prout, staff attorney with the publishers’ association, called the bill “an ineffective and frankly unconstitutional solution that causes more problems than it solves.” She warned that, if enacted into law, it could discourage social media users from sharing any political content online, lest it be a fake and they be held legally liable. Another possible consequence, she said, is that campaigns plaster every attack ad with a deepfake disclosure to shield themselves from lawsuits, leaving the voting public even more confused.

This issue isn't going to go away though, and it's inevitable laws will be passed to try to curtail the harm caused by deep fakes. At the federal level, the discussion has gotten a bit hyperbolic, with senators calling deep fakes a threat to national security, and when those words are used to justify Congressional action, the American public always comes out on the losing end.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, california, deception, deep fakes, free speech, intent, legislation, marc berman

MPAA Actually Steps Up To Defend Free Speech (Really!); Gets Attacked For It

from the the-vampiric-broken-clock-emerges-from-the-shadows dept

The MPAA doesn't often speak out about legislation… not unless it's directly involved in the crafting (remember SOPA?) Issues that affect a much larger percentage of the public are considered none of its business. It will make noise from time to time about fair use and the public domain -- usually arguing there should be less of both, but sometimes speaking out in defense of these IP aspects.

So, it's rather odd to see it a) speak out on pending legislation and b) come down on the right side of it. (via Scott Greenfield)

The Motion Picture Association of America, the movie industry’s major lobbying arm, has for what’s believed to be the first time weighed in on a revenge porn bill: Minnesota’s HF 2741. As there is no federal bill or law specifically prohibiting the practice, the biggest battles against revenge porn take place in state legislatures. Currently, 27 states have laws restricting or banning revenge porn.

At issue is a provision in the bill that the person who releases such photos or videos doesn’t have to actually desire to harm the person depicted for it to be considered a crime. In an open letter, to Minnesota legislators, the MPAA worries that this could hamper the distribution of explicit but newsworthy material, like “images of Holocaust victims, or prisoners at Abu Ghraib.”

In a statement provided to Vocativ by spokesperson Chris Ortman, the MPAA defended the organization’s stance as an attempt to strike a balance between free speech and privacy: “While we agree with the aims of HF 2741’s sponsors, we are concerned that the current version of the bill is written so broadly that it could have a chilling effect on mainstream and constitutionally-protected speech.”

As Scott Greenfield notes, it's rather painful to see one of the 21st century's great villains take a logical, clear-headed stance on an issue -- especially one where its stance may do more damage to it than simply remaining silent. After all, many actresses found themselves on the receiving end of what's termed "non-consensual pornography" after being hacked. Nude photos of celebrities were scattered across the internet, affecting some of Hollywood's biggest stars.

“I imagine that so many of the movie star victims of the celebrity hack would be horrified that the MPAA is taking this stance,” Carrie Goldberg, a Brooklyn attorney who specializes in revenge or nonconsensual porn cases, told Vocativ.

They might be horrified, but the bill being pushed through Minnesota's legislature isn't a good one. Goldberg thinks it's a good one because it's her cause. She's none too thrilled that the MPAA won't back a bill that doesn't stipulate that the unauthorized distribution of intimate photos be linked to malicious intent.

“The stance that they’re taking is for a more narrow law, one that requires the intent to humiliate and harass victims. And Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton are exactly the type who would be excluded from this law,” Goldberg said.

The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative -- the group led by Goldberg -- has issued a point-by-point response to the MPAA's statement on the bill. It's not written by Goldberg, but rather by law professor Mary Anne Franks - someone who is almost always on hand to defend similarly awful legislation.

In her response, she goes toe-to-toe with the MPAA, leading off with a quote from a Supreme Court decision that seems to support her view that this bill -- as written -- is Constitutional.

The Supreme Court has stated that while “laws, if too broadly worded, may deter protected speech to some unknown extent, there comes a point where that effect - at best a prediction - cannot, with confidence, justify invalidating a statute on its face and so prohibiting a State from enforcing the statute against conduct that is admittedly within its power to proscribe. … overbreadth of a statute must not only be real, but substantial as well, judged in relation to the statute's plainly legitimate sweep.” Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601(1973).

Scott Greenfield points out that Franks has conveniently excised the part of this Supreme Court citation that directly contradicts her interpretation of it.

This is a rookie trick for lawyers. The sort that will usually result in a judge ripping a lawyer a new one for trying to sneak a lie past the court. But since Franks has never been in a court, and Collier wouldn’t have a clue about rookie lawyer tricks, it’s all new to them. One nifty trick is using ellipsis to conceal portions of quotes that you want to conceal from the unwary. Whenever someone uses ellipsis, it’s a red flag.

So what is the full quote from Broadrick?

It remains a “matter of no little difficulty” to determine when a law may properly be held void on its face and when “such summary action” is inappropriate. Coates v. City of Cincinnati, 402 U. S. 611, 402 U. S. 617 (1971) (opinion of Black, J.). But the plain import of our cases is, at the very least, that facial overbreadth adjudication is an exception to our traditional rules of practice, and that its function, a limited one at the outset, attenuates as the otherwise unprotected behavior that it forbids the State to sanction moves from “pure speech” toward conduct, and that conduct — even if expressive — falls within the scope of otherwise valid criminal laws that reflect legitimate state interests in maintaining comprehensive controls over harmful, constitutionally unprotected conduct. Although such laws, if too broadly worded, may deter protected speech to some unknown extent, there comes a point where that effect — at best a prediction — cannot, with confidence, justify invalidating a statute on its face, and so prohibiting a State from enforcing the statute against conduct that is admittedly within its power to proscribe. Cf. Alderman v. United States, 394 U. S. 165, 394 U. S. 174-175 (1969). To put the matter another way, particularly where conduct, and not merely speech, is involved, we believe that the overbreadth of a statute must not only be real, but substantial as well, judged in relation to the statute’s plainly legitimate sweep.[Emphasis added.]

So she left out the part about “conduct, and not merely speech.” Shocking. There are plenty of other aspects of Broadrick that make it wholly distinguishable, but no need to go there. This omission proves the lie, not that Franks gives a damn.

And "conduct, not merely speech" is the crux of the MPAA's opposition to the bill. The MPAA doesn't want revenge porn to go unpunished, but it only wants actual revenge porn punished -- not everything else that might get pulled in by the broad wording and lack of a malicious intent requirement. Franks decision to excise the very element the MPAA was concerned about is completely disingenuous, as it places her on the side of the Supreme Court, even when the Supreme Court doesn't agree with her assertions.

Filed Under: free speech, intent, minnesota, revenge porn
Companies: mpaa

Court Adds Much-Needed Element Of Malice To Nova Scotia's Terrible Cyberbullying Law

from the one-of-the-many-problems-with-emotionally-charged-laws dept

Nova Scotia's supremely awful cyberbullying law is finally receiving a much-needed tweak, but it took a trip to the Supreme Court to do it. (As noted by a commenter below, the Supreme Court is just Nova Scotia's first level of trial court, rather than the province's highest court.) The law's original wording was so broad it had the potential to "make bullies of us all," as MacLean's Jessie Brown put it when the law went into effect.

The law -- hastily pushed through the legislative system in response to a cyberbullying victim's suicide -- contained this passage, which was open-ended enough to criminalize all sorts of previously-protected speech:

…any electronic communication through the use of technology including, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, computers, other electronic devices, social networks, text messaging, instant messaging, websites and electronic mail, typically repeated or with continuing effect, that is intended or ought reasonably [to] be expected to cause fear, intimidation, humiliation, distress or other damage or harm to another person’s health, emotional well-being, self-esteem or reputation, and includes assisting or encouraging such communication in any way.

As attorney Karen Bennett-Clayton explains, this wording eliminates nearly every form of defense against cyberbullying allegations. (via Barry Sookman)

This definition of cyberbullying captures a wide range of communication, from the truly insidious statements calculated to cause fear and intimidation to statements that are simply embarrassing or somehow harmful to the recipient’s emotional well-being. The definition contains no requirement to show motive or intent, nor does it require that the communication be false or misleading. On a plain reading of it, true statements could be considered cyberbullying so long as they are repeated and are distressing or harmful to someone’s self-esteem. Moreover, and as it includes those who “assist” in such communications, the definition is also arguably broad enough to include those who publish the electronic communication, such as web hosts or internet service providers (ISPs).

Safeguards that are typically seen in defamation and harassment laws are completely missing from Nova Scotia's cyberbullying law -- which would explain why a person who felt himself a victim of defamation or harassment might take the easier route and use the badly-written cyberbullying law to shut down his "bully," instead. And that's true, even though much of what was said had not risen to the level of defamation, and much of what was contested occurred before the law went into effect.

The court examined the law and the protective order issued by a lower court justice of the peace and found both wanting. As for the law's wording itself, the Supreme Court found it too inclusive to be anywhere near reasonable and, in fact, a threat to normally protected speech. While the law is in place to address cyberbullying, the definition is vague enough to cover far more than internet communications. This has the potential to stymie news reporting through traditional channels, as well as cover "communications" never intended to be included in the cyberbullying law.

Both the ordinary meaning of “electronic” and the inclusive definition capture uses of electricity for communication that were common long before cyberspace (1984). Here are a few examples from the old days: cylinder phonograph records (1877); disc gramophone records (1894) including 78s (1898), long plays (1948), singles (1949), and extended plays (1952); studio cast recordings (1943 or before); broadcasting by way of commercial radio (1920s), commercial television (1928), walkie-talkie (1940), and citizens’ band (1948), and, of course; telegraph (1834) and telephone (1876), including fax (1964). All of these are within the definition of “electronic”, at least when it is read literally.

The Supreme Court continues, providing examples of how this badly-written law could be twisted to cover nearly every form of communication imaginable, so long as the communication itself causes "fear, intimidation or distress."

The first thing to note in the definition of cyberbullying is the disconnect between the ordinary meaning of the word and the literal definition. One who communicates electronically, whether it be by text message or telephone, and says something reasonably expected to cause fear, intimidation, humiliation, or distress is a cyberbully.

The next thing to note is the absence of conditions or qualifications ordinarily part of the meaning of bullying. Truth does not appear to matter. Motive does not appear to matter. Repetition or continuation might (“repeated or with continuing effect”) or might not (“typically”) matter. A neighbour who calls to warn that smoke is coming from your upstairs windows causes fear. A lawyer who sends a demand letter by fax or e-mail causes intimidation. I expect Bob Dylan caused humiliation to P. F. Sloan when he released “Positively 4th Street”, just as a local on-line newspaper causes humiliation when it reports that someone has been charged with a vile offence. Each is a cyberbully, according to the literal meaning of the definitions, no matter the good intentions of the neighbour, the just demand of the lawyer, or the truthfulness of Mr. Dylan or the newspaper.

As the court sees it, the law demands the inclusion of a motivation -- malice -- and yet, its hurried passage failed to include this key element. Adding in that factor goes against the lower court's finding justice of the peace's decision and nullifies the issued protective order.

The evidence does not malice as required, according to my interpretation, for a finding of cyberbullying after August 6, 2013. Firstly, the events after that date, except for the mikemacdonald1975@hushmail.com e-mail, are relatively mild. Secondly, the full correspondence between Mr. Baha’i and Mr. Fraser about removal, which Justice of the Peace Gass did not see, shows efforts by Mr. Baha’i, an unanswered request for suggestions, and statements of Mr. Fraser’s assessment of Mr. Baha’i’s liabilities closing the discussion. This correspondence is inconsistent with malice on Mr. Baha’i’s part.

[...]

Mr. Self chose his forum. It is one in which Mr. Baha’i is entitled to disclosure and discovery, to fully test the many allegations. Unlike Cyber-safety Act proceedings, it is one in which the parties can find out who is behindmikemacdonald1975@hushmail.com, rather than speculate. It is also a forum in which serious risk of defamatory repetition could be controlled by interim injunction, without the ex parte one-sidedness of the Cyber-safety Act. Despite this, the cyber protection order prevents Mr. Baha’i from communicating with the very person who is suing him.

The evidence satisfies me that malicious repetition by Mr. Baha’i is unlikely. Unlike Justice of the Peace Gass on the ex parte application, I have a full picture of the attempts to satisfy Mr. Fraser’s demands on behalf of Mr. Self. Whether he can force Mr. Baha’i to expunge what is not in his control, and whether he can recover damages against Mr. Baha’i for third party reproductions, risk of repetition by Mr. Baha’i is not in issue. Also, unlike the justice, I take into account that the Cyber-safety Act was not law when Mr. Baha’i was active on the present subject.

Summing up, the Supreme Court finds Nova Scotia's cyberbullying law -- as written -- to be a threat to protected speech.

In my assessment, the damage caused by the cyber protection order to Mr. Baha’i’s constitutional right to free speech and to his property right to use his own equipment outweighs the potential harm to Mr. Self if Mr. Baha’i is able to communicate freely. Justice requires that the order be revoked.

This fixes one of the major holes in the law, and restores much-needed protections for uninvolved third-parties (social media platforms, ISPs) who can't, by definition, show malice by hosting or transmitting communications made illegal by this law.

Unfortunately, it doesn't address another of its major flaws -- the wholly ex parte accusation process, which can result in severe penalties for the accused (loss of internet connection or access to electronic devices, gag orders, etc.) without being allowed to present their side of the issue in court.

Filed Under: canada, cyberbulling, intent, malice, nova scotia

Court Tells AZ Legislator To Fix His Unconstitutional Revenge Porn Bill; He Immediately Makes It Much Worse

from the Y-CAN'T-MESNARD-LEGISLATE? dept

When something's broken, you fix it. You don't make it worse.

Arizona's "revenge porn" law is bad. So bad it was challenged by the ACLU -- along with a number of journalistic entities -- who pointed out the overbroad wording would make all sorts of free speech criminal. Like publishing photos of the atrocities committed on naked prisoners at Abu Gharib. Or pictures of women breastfeeding. Or a sexual assault victim showing nude pictures of her assaulter to friends or family.

The court agreed, finding the law as written, unconstitutional. It temporarily blocked it from going into effect until it could be rewritten with a more narrow focus, so as not to criminalize protected speech. So, legislator J.D. Mesnard took his law and amended it. And made it worse and less constitutional. Amanda Levendowski, who has been following this law since its genesis, noted that one of the amendments strips out a much-needed First Amendment protection.

So, Arizona revised its revenge porn law to remove the public interest exception:

http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/52leg/1r/adopted/2561jdm.pdf

Sure enough, Mesnard is breaking what's fixed and "fixing" what isn't broken. It appears Mesnard doesn't like the idea of a narrowly-crafted revenge porn law. Interviewed shortly after the court shot down his law, Mesnard stated that it's too much to expect the state to prove accused revenge pornographers are actually revenge pornographers before charging them with felonies.

And they [law opponents, including the ACLU and the Media Coalition] want it to apply only to someone who was in an intimate relationship and displays a photo that their partner expected would be private with the intent to embarrass, harass or otherwise harm the person.

Mesnard said that language would be a deal-breaker because of the need to prove intent to harm, which he said would create "a big old loophole."

"I'm definitely hesitant to go down that road because it will in my view make the law nearly meaningless," he said. "Because someone could say `I thought it was funny, I didn't mean to cause harm, I was proud of my ex-girlfriend and the way she looks.' They can come up with all sorts of excuses, and suddenly the very same action which in one circumstance is a crime in another circumstance isn't."

Mesnard wants to divorce criminal activity from criminal intent. He wants a law that makes the accused immediately guilty. Not only did he strip more free speech protections from his law, but he's trying to make eye-of-the-beholder the legal standard for revenge porn cases.

Intent is important. It's what separates murder from homicide. It's what separates security researchers and bug hunters from cybercriminals. It's what keeps every offhand, stupid remark on social media from being punishable as a "true threat." Or, that's the way it should be. The government -- at all levels -- seemingly has very little interest in determining intent. It's more comfortable in criminalizing non-criminal activity than fulfilling its obligations as a prosecutorial force.

Mesnard is no different. It's "hard" to prove intent so let's just write a law that doesn't require any additional thought or legwork. Guilty until proven guilty.

A court tells Mesnard his law is bad and must be fixed. And Mesnard makes it even worse. "Revenge porn is bad," he explains. Someone needs to do Mesnard a favor and put down his crippled hobby horse. The only upside here is that there's no way the court is going to find this version any better than the one it rejected a few months ago. And if he and his fellow legislators can't actually fix it, hopefully it will be overturned. But Mesnard remains an eternal optimist, despite being unable to compose a constitutional law.

"I'm confident that we'll come up with something that will be even clearer and cleaner that what we came up with last year and something that even if the ACLU continues to challenge in court will be upheld," Mesnard said.

Maybe he could start by asking the ACLU how this should be written. As the article points out, 13 other states have implemented "revenge porn" laws, but only Mesnard's have been challenged by the ACLU. It is possible to write a narrowly-crafted law that will survive legal challenges, but Mesnard is clearly uninterested in doing this. He's hoping to just muscle his free speech-threatening law past challengers and the court itself. Mesnard may view himself as tenacious, but if he continues to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, he'll find another, much less flattering term being applied.

Filed Under: arizona, free speech, intent, jd mesnard, revenge porn

Texas Tosses Out Law Against Peeping Tom Photographs As A First Amendment Violation

from the the-first-amendment-is-tricky dept

We've been somewhat concerned about various attempts to pass laws against revenge porn. While revenge porn itself is immensely troubling, the problem is that any law that seeks to carve out revenge porn almost certainly leads to dangerous unintended consequences. I recognize that many pushing for such laws have very good intentions, but I worry if, in the haste to "pass a law," the consequences of such laws are being ignored. And then there's the question of whether or not these laws are even constitutional. There's a good chance that many of them are not.

And that's what makes this story interesting. The state criminal appeals court in Texas has just declared that state's "improper photography or visual recording" law an unconstituional violation of the First Amendment. This could have ramifications in a number of ways. First, some have argued that such laws (or, indeed that very law) might represent an alternative to specific anti-revenge porn laws. But, even more to the point, some who have advocated in favor of anti-revenge porn laws have argued they can be accomplished by merely extending existing "peeping tom" laws, like the Texas one. In fact, that's how California did its anti-revenge porn law.

But the Texas court says it's a First Amendment violation. First, it notes that photography is, by definition, "inherently expressive," and thus there's certainly an expressive act which implicates the First Amendment.

The camera is essentially the photographer’s pen or paintbrush. Using a camera to create a photograph or video is like applying pen to paper to create a writing or applying brush to canvas to create a painting. In all of these situations, the process of creating the end product cannot reasonably be separated from the end product for First Amendment purposes. This is a situation where the “regulation of a medium inevitably affects communication itself.” We conclude that a person’s purposeful creation of photographs and visual recordings is entitled to the same First Amendment protection as the photographs and visual recordings themselves.

And then you run into some First Amendment problems, even if the photographs are sexual in nature:

As the Supreme Court has explained, “Sexual expression which is indecent but not obscene is protected by the First Amendment,” and even some obscene sexual expression enjoys First Amendment protection if it occurs solely within the confines of the home. Of course, the statute at issue here does not require that the photographs or visual recordings be obscene, be child pornography, or even be depictions of nudity, nor does the statute require the intent to produce photographs or visual recordings of that nature. Banning otherwise protected expression on the basis that it produces sexual arousal or gratification is the regulation of protected thought, and such a regulation is outside the government’s power.

It then goes on to quote a Texas Supreme Court ruling (which in turn is quoting the Federal Supreme Court) in noting:

The government cannot constitutionally premise legislation on the desirability of controlling a person’s private thoughts. First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

That's to drive home the point that the fact that many of these laws focus on the person's intent is problematic.

The court further points out:

We also keep in mind the Supreme Court’s admonition that the forms of speech that are exempt from First Amendment protection are limited, and we should not be quick to recognize new categories of unprotected expression

That doesn't mean there aren't possible solutions. The court notes that there is a legitimate interest in protecting privacy, but says that the current law is way too broad, and covers plenty of situations where privacy is not truly implicated.

The State asserts an interest in protecting the privacy of those photographed or recorded. Privacy constitutes a compelling government interest when the privacy interest is substantial and the invasion occurs in an intolerable manner. We agree with the State that substantial privacy interests are invaded in an intolerable manner when a person is photographed without consent in a private place, such as the home, or with respect to an area of the person that is not exposed to the general public, such as up a skirt.

But § 21.15(b)(1) contains no language addressing privacy concerns. The provision certainly applies to situations in which privacy has been violated, but that is because the provision applies broadly to any non-consensual act of photography or visual recording, as long as it is accompanied by the requisite sexual intent. It is obvious that the portion of the statute at issue is not the least restrictive means of protecting the substantial privacy interests in question.

And thus, the ruling actually suggests a much more narrowly tailored law might pass muster.

there are narrower methods of reaching such situations that address more directly the substantial privacy interests at stake. For instance, subsection (b)(2) of the statute provides an alternative culpable mental state of “with intent to . . . invade the privacy of the other person.” If this culpable mental state were a conjunctive element of subsection (b)(1), it would narrow the provision at least somewhat to address privacy concerns. Subsection (b)(1) could also be narrowed by adding an element that requires that a person’s privacy interest be invaded as a result of the place of the person recorded or the manner in which a visual recording is made. Or the legislature could designate specific places and manners that are proscribed, such as specifically proscribing the taking of a photograph of a person inside his home there are narrower methods of reaching such or the taking of a photograph underneath a person’s clothing. Because less restrictive alternatives would adequately protect the substantial privacy interests that may sometimes be threatened by non-consensual photography, the provision at issue before us fails to satisfy strict scrutiny.

Thus, whether or not the State appeals this ruling to the state Supreme Court (as seems likely), it's possible that a more narrowly tailored law might be allowed, if it really focuses on situations that violate someone's privacy.

In the end, it's good to see overly broad laws tossed out, even if there are extremely legitimate concerns about the nature of revenge porn. Some people have asked why we don't advocate for a specific solution, and the general answer is that it's not clear there's a good one that doesn't also entail significant consequences for other forms of speech (or innovation, in cases where these bills try to attack intermediary liability). Revenge porn sites are immensely problematic, but just because something is problematic does not necessarily mean that a new (often overly broad) law is the answer.

Filed Under: first amendment, free speech, improper photography, intent, peeping tom, photography, revenge porn, texas

Police Admit That NZ Spy Agency Illegally Spied On Kim Dotcom, But Aren't Going To Do Anything About It

from the enforce-the-law? dept

You may recall that it came out last year that the New Zealand equivalent of the NSA, the GCSB, illegally spied on Kim Dotcom (oh, and dozens of others), possibly with the help of the NSA, despite not being allowed to spy on those in New Zealand.

An investigation by the police has agreed that the GCSB clearly broke the law... but the police have said that they don't plan to prosecute the spy agency. Because, you know, that might hold them accountable. Now, at least, the GCSB knows that it can abuse the law at will with no punishment.

Instead, it appears that the excuse being used by the police is the same one we've been hearing from NSA defenders: because these abuses weren't intentional, they can be ignored:

Today, Detective Superintendent Peter Read told a media conference that in spite of the GCSB committing one breach under the provisions of the Crimes Act, no criminal "intent" by the GCSB could be established.

I'm not sure that actually makes sense. Yes, when it comes to criminal activity, intent can be important in determining if it's actually criminal, but there's little doubt that the GCSB intentionally spied on Dotcom. It wouldn't have taken very much at all to recognize that Dotcom was a resident of New Zealand who GCSB is forbidden from surveilling. So it seems like the intent was pretty clear.

Filed Under: criminal, gcsb, intent, kim dotcom, mens rea, new zealand, spying, surveillance

Is The Line Between 'Hacker' And 'Criminal' Really That Fuzzy?

from the only-if-you-don't-really-understand-stuff dept

We recently wrote about a series of cases where young computer hackers were either charged or threatened with criminal charges for doing things that don't seem particularly criminal at all. The NY Times now has a blog post on more or less the same subject, but focusing on the "fuzzy and shifting line between hacker and criminal." While it's good that more attention is getting paid to these kinds of questionable cases, I wonder if that framing is really accurate. I don't think there's a "line" -- fuzzy, shifting or not -- between "hacker" and "criminal." The two things are different. Can you be a criminal hacker? Sure. But the problem is that many non-techie folks seem to assume that any kind of hacking must be criminal. And that's the problem. It's not that some imaginary line is moving around, but that some people don't seem to understand that hacking itself is not criminal, and that there are plenty of good reasons to hack -- including to expose security holes.

Filed Under: cracker, criminal, freedom to tinker, hacker, intent

Court Limits Bradley Manning's Ability To Use Whistleblower Defense

from the motive-limited dept

A key part of the legal fight concerning Bradley Manning over the past few weeks was whether or not he'd be able to present his own motives as part of his defense -- showing that he believed that he was engaged in act of whistleblowing that would be good for the US. His legal team argued that this intent would push back on the Espionage Act claims, since the intent was never to help Al Qaeda or any other enemy, but rather to help the US. However, the court has mostly -- but not entirely -- barred Manning from using this defense, meaning that he will have a much more difficult time arguing that his acts were a form of whistleblowing.

Basically, Manning's legal team won't be able to raise his motives for most of the charges, though they will be able to raise motives during any sentencing. They will be able to raise motives, narrowly focused, on the question of whether or not he was "aiding the enemy" and to show that he was not "dealing with the enemy." That's at least a small step in the right direction. However, there are multiple other charges where he cannot raise his motive -- including charges around whether or not he had "good faith" in releasing the documents and that he "wrongfully and wantonly caused to be published on the internet intelligence belonging to the United States government." Basically, the judge is saying that those charges require an objective standard, rather than Manning's specific viewpoint.

The other issue that Manning's team appears to have lost on was their desire to show the lack of harm from all of the leaks. The court ruled that this really doesn't matter in the trial, because it's all after the fact, and Manning did not know beforehand the results and whether or not it resulted in harm. Of course, part of Manning's defense is that he chose documents that would not cause harm on purpose -- but the judge apparently disagreed.

All in all, this definitely increases the likelihood that Manning will lose in court.

Filed Under: aiding the enemy, bradley manning, defense, espionage act, intent, motive, whistleblower

When Judges Are Determining Whether Or Not Art Should Exist... We Have A Problem

from the judges-as-art-critics dept

We've written about the somewhat horrifying ruling in the Richard Prince appropriation art case before. If you haven't been following the details, Prince is an appropriation artist, who takes works he finds elsewhere, and modifies and transforms them into different pieces of artwork. The law around this kind of artwork is tragically murky -- with some cases ruling that appropriation art is fair use, and some ruling otherwise. The Prince case got extra attention for a few reasons. One is that Prince is considered one of the biggest name artists around, and his works can sell for millions of dollars. The second is that this case also implicated the gallery that showed Prince's work, raising some serious questions about secondary liability for galleries, and whether or not galleries themselves must become copyright experts. Finally, the ruling suggested that Prince's artwork -- valued at a few million dollars -- might need to be destroyed..

This is the truly horrifying part. Whether or not you appreciate the work, clearly some people do like it. Personally, it's not my taste, but I'll be damned if my own personal taste (or any other third party's personal taste) should ever be the determining factor in whether or not any particular piece of art should exist.

And, yet, that's what we have here. While the case is on appeal, the NY Times recently ran a pretty good overview of the case, and highlighted why the art world is paying so much attention to it. Especially for a younger generation, building new works of art on works that came before seems totally natural. It's a good thing:

“For the generation that I spend my days with, there’s not even any ideological baggage that comes along with appropriation anymore,” said Stephen Frailey, an artist whose work has used appropriation and who runs the undergraduate photography program at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. “They feel that once an image goes into a shared digital space, it’s just there for them to change, to elaborate on, to add to, to improve, to do whatever they want with it. They don’t see this as a subversive act. They see the Internet as a collaborative community and everything on it as raw material.”

At the same time the tools for mining and remolding those mountains of raw material are proliferating. In November a developer and a designer introduced an iPad art app called Mixel, aimed at amateurs but certain to end up in artists’ studios. It allows users to grab images from the Web or elsewhere, collage them almost effortlessly and then pass them around, social media style, for appreciation or re-mixing.

One of its creators, Khoi Vinh, a former design director of NYTimes.com, has been surprisingly frank when asked about the tsunami of copyright problems such an idea stirs up. “This is really a case of, you have to do it, try it and ask for forgiveness later,” he said to an interviewer. “Otherwise it would never get out there.”

What you begin to realize is that, like the wider copyright battle, to some extent this is a "generational" thing. And I don't mean that totally as an "age" thing. There are plenty of "older" people who understand these issues (or who create works via appropriation), just as there are some younger copyright maximalists. But, in general, this does seem like a generational thing, where you have generations of people who simply find the process of building on the works of art completely natural, and those who don't.

But the part that really troubles me about these discussions is a rather simple point about fair use: if the new work does not, in any way, harm the original work, it's seems positively insane to me to think that it shouldn't be seen as fair use. This point is made by Prince's lawyers:

Joshua Schiller, Mr. Prince’s appeals lawyer from the firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner, said the boundary is whether a new work of art results from the borrowing. And he argued that it was clear that Mr. Prince had made parts of Mr. Cariou’s pictures into distinctive Richard Prince works, not just copy them to pass them off as his own and deprive Mr. Cariou of his livelihood. Whether the work was successful and whether Mr. Prince’s intentions were interesting or even explainable can be left to debate. But the primary intention was to create a work of art, Mr. Schiller said, and that is the kind of creativity the law seeks to encourage.

“This is not piracy,” he said. “These are not handbags.”

I'm still waiting for someone (anyone!) to give me a compelling explanation for why it's a problem in any way, shape or form, if the new work does nothing to take away from the old work. In fact, in cases like this, it's easy to argue that the new work, since it came from a much more well known and successful artist, likely drew much more attention to the original work, thereby raising that artist's profile and stature.

Filed Under: appropriation art, art, copyright, culture, fair use, intent, patrick cariou, richard prince

Do We Really Want Judges Determining What Art 'Says'?

from the freedom-of-expression dept

There was a very big legal ruling last week having to do with copyright in the art world. It involves the artwork of Richard Prince, an appropriation artist, who took some photographs from Patrick Cariou's book Yes, Rasta, of various Rastafarians, and then used them in various paintings. There were a bunch of photographs used -- this is the comparison shot that has been used in a lot of the press coverage: That's Cariou's photo on the left, and Prince's painting on the right. I'll admit that, personally, I'm not that impressed. But I'm really not sure what my art criticism should have to do with anything. Yet, many others seem to want to jump in and have their own criticisms of the art determine whether or not this sort of thing should be allowed. And that's troubling from the perspective of letting artists create what moves them, rather than setting up laws over what is and is not allowed to be art.

In this case, despite plenty of other lawsuits that found appropriation art to be legal, the judge ruled that this is infringing, leading many to predict a pretty massive shakeup in the modern art world, where this kind of appropriation art has become pretty common. What strikes me as most troubling is that the judge's decision appears to rest mainly on what the artist's stated intent was in creating these paintings, and deciding that since he was neither commenting on the original works nor the subjects of the images, it's no longer a protected fair use. That seems questionable. Why should the intent of the artist matter one way or the other? As law professor Peter Friedman notes in the link above:

What was Jackson Pollock's purpose in painting Lavender Mist? Van Gogh�s in painting The Irises? Haven�t we accepted by now the limitations focus on artistic intention would impose on our appreciation of art?

One take away from this is that any time an artist is sued, they should just insist that the artwork they created was "commenting" on the original work, even if it wasn't. But why is that the standard? The fair use standard doesn't say anything about intent, and judging the true intent of an artist seems like a really dangerous game. Some, like Charlie Finch, are pointing out how this is a dangerous slippery slope under which judges are determining the value of artwork:

Judge Batts implied a kind of slippery slope by observing that Prince had not cut up or sectioned Cariou's pictures sufficiently, making an observer wonder whether a Mimmo Rotella standard of radical pictorial transformation would be the minimum standard for fair use.

Either way, having a judge as an interpreter of the meaning of art remains Kafkaesque: we can trot out the entire oeuvre of Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and a thousand other artists as violators of Judge Batts' standard.

The reality is that the judge here seems to have gone beyond what fair use has said in the past, in creating this new standard. As Greg Allen warns this is a massive limiting of fair use:

If it stands, it would have major, sweeping, and stifling effects.

Not only would the current operating assumptions of fair use and transformative use be ratcheted way back, but the contemporary art world would be turned upside down. It would restrict both how artists appropriate, or even refer to, copyrighted work. And it would turn galleries into copyright police, with an affirmative responsibility to clear images, sources, and references for the work they show and sell.

That last point is also notable. It wasn't just Prince who was sued, but also the art gallery that displayed his works, which was found guilty of direct infringement for displaying and selling the works, and then also found guilty of vicarious and contributory infringement because it "had the right and ability (and perhaps even responsibility) to ensure that Prince obtained licenses." That seems like a pretty big stretch as well.

In the end, I'm sure people will stick up for this ruling because they don't think what Richard Prince did was very good or particularly artistic. Yet, clearly, many in the art world disagree with you, as his paintings sell for extraordinarily high prices. And, in the end, shouldn't that be the determining factor? If people are willing to consider this artwork and pay for it as artwork, then what's the problem? On top of that, it seems like Cariou should have been able to capitalize on this attention himself, increasing the value of his own work.

And... speaking of Cariou's work... one question I have in all of this is how much is Cariou paying the Rastafarians that he photographed? After all, isn't he making use of their works as well? Either way, Prince has made it clear that he's appealing and has hired some powerhouse lawyers to help him out. Of course, he had to appeal quickly, because under the original ruling, all of his paintings at issue in this lawsuit were to be destroyed.

As a final word, however, I'm going to quote a chunk of copyright lawyer Ray Dowd's analysis, in which he worries about what this means for art:

Others are delighted at Prince's discomfiture.   I am troubled.   Fine art, truly fine art in an art gallery, is a place where a copyrighted work becomes a fetish object, a tribute, a decontextualized thing revealing a new meaning.   The urinal of Marcel Duchamp.   The Brillo Box of Andy Warhol.   Both utilitarian objects made by others and fetishized by the artists.

And look at L.H.O.O.Q. - nothing original in the execution, but the Mona Lisa was in the public domain at the time.   Prince is blatantly stealing.   Plagiarists take the words of others and try to make you believe that they have crafted them.   But Prince's cutouts from advertising, porn and outlaw biker magazines never misled the consumer.  

But somewhere, something bothers me about shutting a highly respected fine artist down completely and burning his works when the first sale doctrine would permit him to buy a copy, modify it and resell it.   When the First Amendment lets even repulsive speech be heard and the contemporary art world says it is art, I have a problem with the government burning it.

To me, an original work of fine art properly labeled as such by a new artist is almost pure speech - or in some way pure idea - even if it includes major appropriations.  Things change when the artwork is widely reproduced.  When the consumers are paying tens of thousands for Prince to take something no one is interested in, put his spin on it, and add value.   Prince's "appropriation" added ten million dollars worth of value to a pile of books.   Everyone knew he didn't create the original.

This is not a question of consumers being defrauded, these are wealthy ultrasophisticates on the cutting edge who are the purchasers - surrounded by the top art advisers and critics -if these people feel that Prince's value added is that great, what is the harm in letting them indulge, as long as Prince legally purchased the original books?   In fact, Prince's prices will probably soar - scarcity and scandal drive art prices up.

You should click through to read the entire Dowd piece, which includes multiple images to back up what he has to say. In the end, his point is really the key one: no one is being harmed here. No one is being fooled. Art is a form of speech, and even if you personally don't think much of it, or are upset about how the artist goes about it, is that really something for a court to decide?

In the context of music, we were just discussing how an appropriation artist like "Kutiman" was creating new artwork by pulling from YouTube. And, even some of the staunchest copyright defenders in our comments said what he was doing was fine, trying to distinguish his "creative" appropriation with "consumptive" appropriation by others. Well, here's another case of "creative" appropriation. So why isn't it allowed?

Filed Under: appropriation art, art, copyright, culture, fair use, intent, patrick cariou, richard prince