City Of London Police Parrot Academic Publishers' Line That People Visiting Sci-Hub Should Be Afraid, Very Afraid

from the just-a-coincidence? dept

Techdirt has been following the saga of the City of London Police's special "Intellectual Property Crime Unit" (PIPCU) since it was formed back in 2013. It has not been an uplifting story. PIPCU seems to regard itself as Hollywood's private police force worldwide, trying to stop copyright infringement online, but without much understanding of how the Internet works, or even regard for the law, as a post back in 2014 detailed. PIPCU rather dropped off the radar, until last week, when its dire warnings about a new, deadly threat to the wondrous world of copyright were picked up by a number of gullible journalists. PIPCU's breathless press release reveals the shocking truth: innocent young minds are being encouraged to access knowledge, funded by the public, as widely as possible. Yes, PIPCU has discovered Sci-Hub:

Sci-Hub obtains the papers through a variety of malicious means, such as the use of phishing emails to trick university staff and students into divulging their login credentials. Sci Hub then use this to compromise the university's network and download the research papers.

That repeats an unsubstantiated claim about Sci-Hub that has frequently been made by academic publishers. And simply using somebody's login credentials does not constitute "compromising" the university's network, since at most it gives access to course details and academic papers: believe it or not, students are not generally given unrestricted access to university financial or personnel systems. The press release goes on:

Visitors to the site are very vulnerable to having their credentials stolen, which once obtained, are used by Sci-Hub to access further academic journals for free, and continue to pose a threat to intellectual property rights.

This is complete nonsense. It was obviously written by someone who has never accessed Sci-Hub, since there is no attempt anywhere to ask visitors for any information about anything. The site simply offers friction-free access to 85 million academic papers -- and not "70 million" papers as the press release claims, further proof the author never even looked at the site. Even more ridiculous is the following:

With more students now studying from home and having more online lectures, it is vital universities prevent students accessing the stolen information on the university network. This will not only prevent the universities from having their own credentials stolen, but also those of their students, and potentially the credentials of other members of the households, if connected to the same internet provider.

When students are studying from home, they won't be using the university network if they access Sci-Hub, but their own Internet connection. And again, even if they do visit, they won't have their credentials "stolen", because that's not how the site works. And the idea that members of the same household could also have their "credentials" stolen simply by virtue of being connected to the same Internet provider is so wrong you have to wonder whether the person writing it even knows how the modern (encrypted) Internet works.

But beyond the sheer wrongness of the claims being made here, there's another, more interesting aspect. Techdirt readers may recall a post from a few months back that analyzed how publishers in the form of the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative were trying to claim that using Sci-Hub was a terrible security risk -- rather as PIPCU is now doing, and employing much of the same groundless scare-mongering. It's almost as if PIPCU, always happy to toe Big Copyright's line, has uncritically taken a few talking points from the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative and repackaged in them in the current sensationalist press release. It would be great to know whether PIPCU and the Scholarly Networks Security Initiative have been talking about Sci-Hub recently. So I've submitted a Freedom of Information request to find out.

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Filed Under: academic papers, academic publishers, city of london police, copyright, fud, pipcu, publishers, scholarly networks security initiative
Companies: sci-hub

City Of London Police Fail And Censor Their Way To A Lot More UK Taxpayer Money

from the censor-your-way-to-the-top dept

We've written plenty about the City of London Police and its Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), which despite an official jurisdiction covering a square mile of London, has made it clear that it considers itself Hollywood's private police force worldwide when it comes to stopping copyright infringement online. PIPCU has basically been a bumbling, censoring mess from the beginning. A year ago, it started ordering domain registrars to kill off websites with no court order and no legal basis -- demands that actually violated ICANN's policies. For registrars that ignored those baseless, bogus censorship demands, PIPCU started sending ridiculous threats claiming that they were engaged in criminal behavior. Of course, PIPCU's understanding of both the internet and "criminal" laws is suspect. The head of the unit, Adrian Leppard, claims that "the Tor" is "90% of the internet" and "is a risk to society." Another top officer, Andy Fyfe, somehow believes that if PIPCU isn't running around censoring sites there would be anarchy online.

Of course, it's not just crazy statements and bogus threats. PIPCU is actually causing real damage. It has built a secret pirate blacklist over which there is no transparency, no due process and no appeal. On some of those sites, it is injecting advertisements that are mockably ridiculous (though the injections are potentially illegal in their own right). Much more troubling is that PIPCU has been completely shutting down websites and privacy services with no legal basis at all. And, when they did actually arrest someone -- claiming "industrial scale" infringement -- the eventual details were so weak that the case was completely dropped in a matter of weeks.

Given the Keystone e-Cops nature of the City of London Police's PIPCU, you'd think that, maybe, just maybe, it would be time to disband PIPCU and let the City of London Police get back to protecting London's banks (its other main pasttime). Instead, the UK government has just given PIPCU a raise, dumping £3 million of UK taxpayer money into the group to continue its bumbling, censoring, technologically clueless ways. While I'm sure this makes some increasingly obsolete gatekeepers happy, it's hard to see how this helps content creators or the public in any way at all.

Filed Under: censorship, city of london police, copyright, copyright cops, infringement, ipo, pipcu, uk

City Of London Police Drove 200 Miles To Arrest And Jail 'Industrial' Level Pirate... Only To Have Case Fall Apart And All Charges Dropped

from the oops,-sorry-'bout-that dept

We've certainly questioned the efforts by the City of London Police to set themselves up as the legacy entertainment industry's private police force. Over the past year or so, the police operation (which, yes, represents just one square mile of London, but a square mile with lots of big important businesses), has demonstrated that it will be extremely aggressive, not in fighting criminal wrongdoing, but in protecting the private business interests of some legacy companies, often with little to no legal basis. It also appears that the City of London's famed Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) is not particularly technology savvy, and seems to just accept what big record labels, movie studios and the like tell it.

In the last few months, the City of London Police's PIPCU effort has even gone on a bit of an arresting spree, under questionable circumstances. We noted in August that they had arrested the operator of an anti-censorship proxy service, almost entirely based on the say so of the entertainment industry. In September, PIPCU took a 200+ mile drive up the road to arrest Zain Parvez to great fanfare. PIPCU insisted that Parvez was running a series of streaming sites related to sporting events, and was infringing on the rights of the Premier League (notorious copyright maximalists). PIPCU claimed it was an "industrial scale" operation, and tossed Parvez in jail.

Fast forward a few weeks and... all charges against Parvez have been dropped. Apparently, once the case reached the Manchester Crown Court and the Crown Prosecution Services looked at it, they realized how weak a case there was, and simply dropped the whole thing. Given PIPCU's previous statements and actions, this hardly seems surprising. PIPCU and the City of London Police appear to be the latest in an unfortunately long line of folks who think that copyright infringement is such a black-and-white/open-and-shut thing that you can just declare someone "guilty" based on some questionable assumptions and it's obvious for everyone to understand why.

Perhaps, the UK's Intellectual Property Office, rather than funding PIPCU to be the legacy industry's personal police force, should have spent those resources actually training them to understand technology, due process and such.

Filed Under: arrest, charges, city of london police, copyright, dropped, pipcu, zain parvez

Head Of City of London Police Unit That Operates Without Court Orders Worries About Online 'Lawlessness'

from the know-thyself dept

A year ago, Techdirt wrote about a new unit set up by the City of London Police to tackle crimes involving intellectual monopolies. Since then, there have been a flood of posts about its increasingly disproportionate actions, including seizing domain names, shutting down websites, inserting ads on websites, and arresting someone for running an anti-censorship proxy. This makes a PCPro interview with the head of that unit, Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Andy Fyfe, particularly valuable, since it helps shed a little light on the unit's mindset. It's well-worth reading the whole thing, but here's a key section:

I'm very interested in having a debate in the media about how much policing of the internet people want. At the moment, there’s almost no regulation and no policing of the internet and that means members of the public -- such as you and I -- when we're trying to use it for shopping or to do internet shopping, actually don’t have anyone looking out for our interests to make sure that the people we’re dealing with at the other end of the line are legitimate or reasonable or looking after our data properly.

In the end, that might mean that the internet becomes completely ungovernable, and that no one can dare operate on it at all, no one can dare do their shopping or banking on it.

DCI Fyfe seems to be talking about a different Internet from the one most of us use, which is not just subject to regulations, but to multiple regulations because of the way overlapping jurisdictions are involved. Indeed, because of this, the Internet arguably has far more policing than the physical world. Moreover, in terms of "looking out for our interests," the Internet is unique in that its users are able to do that for themselves using online rating systems, reviews left on websites and general comments on social networks. Word about dodgy online operators gets out incredibly quickly, so in this respect, we are probably far safer online than in the physical world where such mechanisms are rarely available.

However, it is true that there is a threat to online shopping and banking, but not the one DCI Fyfe is probably thinking about. Buying and selling goods, or transferring money online, is relatively safe thanks to strong encryption that is now routinely available for such operations. Or rather, it was relatively safe until spy agencies like the NSA and GCHQ decided to undermine the entire basis of these activities for their own purely selfish ends, and disregarding the collateral damage they would cause to general users of the Internet.

Despite the harm caused by such actions, DCI Fyfe thinks a time may come when the government will want to interfere even more:

That time might come, but it's how much interference the public will tolerate, because clearly a lot of people believe there should be no state interference at all on the internet, but that leads to lawlessness and anarchy.

The growing crusade of DCI Fyfe's unit against online sites purely on the say-so of the copyright industry shows that he doesn't really care what "a lot of people" think about state interference. And when it comes to "anarchy and lawlessness," acting without court orders seems to fit that bill rather well.

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Filed Under: andy frye, city of london police, copyright, internet, ip, jurisdiction, lawlessness, pipcu

City Of London Police Issue Vague, Idiotic Warning To Registrars That They're Engaged In Criminal Behavior Because It Says So

from the say-what? dept

This was mentioned briefly in our recent post about EasyDNS changing how it deals with online pharmacies, but it's still dealing with bizarre requests from the City of London Police. As we've been detailing, the City of London Police seem to think that (1) their job is to protect the business model of the legacy entertainment industry and (2) that they can do this globally, despite actually just representing one-square mile and (3) that they can do this entirely based on their own say so, rather than any actual court ruling. It started last year when the City of London Police started ordering registrars to transfer domains to the police based entirely on their say so, rather than any sort of due process/trial that found the sites guilty of violating a law. The police wanted the domains to point to sites that the legacy entertainment industry approved of, which makes you wonder why the police are working on behalf of one particular industry and acting as an ad campaign for them.

Speaking of advertising, the City of London Police's more recent tactic is inserting ridiculous and misleading banner ads on websites based on a secret blacklist that has no oversight and no due process or way to appeal. Such lists often include perfectly legitimate sites. But, I'm sure we can trust the City of London Police to get this right, given that the guy in charge of the City of London Police's Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), Adrian Leppard, believes that "the Tor" is 90% of the internet and that "Bitnet" is a "huge risk and threat to our society."

The latest move, as detailed in a post by Mark Jeftovic from EasyDNS, is sending registrars like EasyDNS a "notice of criminality" that doesn't directly tell the company to do anything, other than to think long and hard about who they do business with.

Classification: NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED
Dear Sir or Madam,

Notice of Criminality

[domain name redacted by easyDNS]

EASYDNS TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

Receipt of this email serves as notice that the aforementioned domain, managed by EASYDNS TECHNOLOGIES, INC. 28/03/2014 is being used to facilitate criminal activity, including offences under:

Fraud Act 2006
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Serious Crime Act 2007

We respectfully request that EASYDNS TECHNOLOGIES, INC. give consideration to your ongoing business relationship with the owners/purchasers of the domain to avoid any future accusations of knowingly facilitating the movement of criminal funds.

Should you require any clarification please do not hesitate to make contact.

Kind regards,

PIPCU Anti-Piracy | Operations | Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit | PIPCUantipiracy@cityoflondon.police.uk<PIPCUantipiracy@cityoflondon.police.uk > | Address: City of London Police Economic Crime Directorate, 21 New Street, London, EC2M 4TP | ü www.cityoflondon.police.uk<http://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/>

As Jeftovic notes, the implication here is pretty clear. The City of London Police wants to "build a case" that EasyDNS is somehow responsible for aiding and abetting criminal activity.

Once again, we are being asked to do (something, we're actually not sure what this time) based entirely on an allegation which has never been tested in a court of law and has been afforded absolutely zero "due process". (The domain in question is a search engine that hosts no content).

[....]

We think this time the intent is not to actually get the domain name taken down, but rather to build some sort of "case" (I won't call it legal, perhaps the better word would be "kafka-esque") that we, easyDNS by mere "Receipt of this email" are now knowingly allowing domains under management to be "used to facilitate criminal activity".

Thus, if we don't takedown the domains PIPCU want us to, when they want us to, then we may face accusations in the future (in their own words) "of knowingly facilitating the movement of criminal funds."

Which of course, we don't know at all because there has never even been a court case anywhere to test the PIPCU allegations. I know I never went to law school or anything, but in my mind, until that happens, that is all they are – allegations.

And, of course, it's tough to see how the City of London Police have any jurisdiction at all over EasyDNS, a Canadian company. Jeftovic goes on to wonder if the City of London Police are actually defaming the websites they accuse in these notices. Of course, the problem is that these sites tend to be small and powerless. As we've seen with sites like Dajaz1 and Rojadirecta, even after they were taken down and businesses were destroyed for over a year before the Justice Department in the US simply dropped the cases and handed back the domain names, there was little those sites could do in response. Sure, they could have filed a lawsuit, but lawsuits are expensive, and a lawsuit for a tiny struggling website against the US government? That's just not likely to get anywhere productive.

What's extra troubling is how this tactic of targeting registrars for non-judicial censorship like this is becoming increasingly common -- and it's happening in countries like the US and the UK which claim to support basic principles of due process and are (supposedly) against prior restraint. When it comes to the City of London Police, they seem to be operating without any sort of controls or oversight, just making it up as they go along. Unfortunately, because they're "the police," it doesn't seem likely that anyone will get them to cut out this censorious and harassing activity.

Filed Under: adrian leppard, city of london police, copyright, facilitation, jurisdiction, notice of criminality, pipcu, registrars
Companies: easydns