Apple Gives Chinese Government What It Wants (Again); Pulls Quran App From Chinese App Store

from the consequences-of-heavy-buy-in dept

Apple has generally been pretty good about protecting users from government overreach, its recent voluntary (and misguided) foray into client-side scanning of users' images notwithstanding. But that seemingly only applies here in the United States, which is going to continue to pose problems for Apple if it chooses to combat local overreach while giving foreign, far more censorial governments greater and greater control.

Like many other tech companies, Apple has no desire to lose access to one of the largest groups of potential customers in the world. Hence its deference to China, which has seen the company do things like pull the New York Times app in China following the government's obviously bullshit claim that the paper was a purveyor of "fake news."

Since then, Apple has developed an even closer relationship with the Chinese government, which culminated in the company opening data centers in China to comply with the government's mandate that all foreign companies store Chinese citizens' data locally where it's much easier for the government to demand access.

On a smaller scale, Apple pulled another app -- one that encrypted text messages on platforms that don't provide their own encryption -- in response to government demands. Once again, Apple left Chinese citizens at the mercy of their government, apparently in exchange for the privilege of selling them devices that promised them security and privacy while actually offering very little of either.

The latest acquiescence by Apple will help the Chinese government continue its oppression of the country's Uighur minority -- Muslim adherents that have been subjected to religious persecution for years. Whoever the government doesn't cage, disappear, or genocide into nonexistence will see nothing but the bottom of a jackboot for years to come. Apple is aiding and abetting the jackboot, according to this report by the BBC.

Apple has taken down one of the world's most popular Quran apps in China, following a request from officials.

Quran Majeed is available across the world on the App Store - and has nearly 150,000 reviews. It is used by millions of Muslims.

The BBC understands that the app was removed for hosting illegal religious texts.

The app is developed by Pakistan Data Management Services, a software company that dates back nearly 50 years. China pretty much owns Pakistan at this point, but this has nothing to do with Pakistan's purchased allegiance to the Chinese government, and everything to do with punishing religious beliefs (and believers) the Chinese government doesn't like.

Apple's compliance cuts off access to nearly 1 million Chinese users of the app, as the BBC reports. This is happening despite the fact the Chinese government pays lip service to a limited form of religious freedom.

The Chinese Communist Party officially recognises Islam as a religion in the country.

And yet, it claims the primary religious text of the faith is "illegal.

Apple is also at least partly owned by China, albeit not in any formal sense. It relies heavily on Chinese manufacturing to produce its devices. This means Apple faces both upline and downline issues if it refuses to comply with the Chinese government's demands. The company is in a difficult position, what with shareholders in the US (and all over the world) expecting continued growth and profitability. But it's not as though it's an impossible situation. Sometimes you have to sacrifice profits for principle.

Apple -- with its reliance on Chinese manufacturing -- may be in too deep to make a principled stand. China has the upper hand for now. If Apple wants to continue to be seen as a world leader in device security and personal privacy protections, it needs to start figuring out how to end its abusive relationship with the Chinese government.

Filed Under: app store, china, content moderation, ios, quran, religion
Companies: apple

Montana Prosecutors Push For Idea That State's Criminal Defamation Statute Outlaws Disparaging Religious Groups

from the 'bigger-than-Jesus?'-that's-a-handcuffin' dept

As much as some people may not like it, the First Amendment protects a lot of offensive speech. Montana's laws, however, seemingly don't. In a case currently making its way through its court system, the prosecution is arguing that the state's broadly-written criminal defamation statute encompasses this area of protected speech.

As Eugene Volokh points out, most criminal defamation statutes cover only knowingly false statements made about singular people -- which means there's a specific victim to tie to the criminal activity. Montana's, on the other hand, contains no such specification.

(1) Defamatory matter is anything that exposes a person or a group, class, or association to hatred, contempt, ridicule, degradation, or disgrace in society or injury to the person’s or its business or occupation.
(2) Whoever, with knowledge of its defamatory character, … communicates any defamatory matter to a third person without the consent of the person defamed commits the offense of criminal defamation ….
(3) Violation of subsection (2) is justified if:
(a) the defamatory matter is true;
(b) the communication is absolutely privileged;
(c) the communication consists of fair comment made in good faith with respect to persons participating in matters of public concern;
(d) the communication consists of a fair and true report or a fair summary of any judicial, legislative, or other public or official proceedings; or
(e) the communication is between persons each having an interest or duty with respect to the subject matter of the communication and is made with the purpose to further the interest or duty.

Because of the "person, group, class or association" language, prosecutors are arguing that defendant David Lenio's social media postings disparaging Jews should be met with criminal charges. (Lenio's posting also included several "threats" -- including several offers to shoot up a school -- for which he has received additional criminal charges. These charges, too, are debatable, since many of the postings are nonspecific in nature.) Lenio has appealed the lower court's finding that certain postings violated the state's criminal defamation law, arguing (correctly) that the state's law is overbroad.

Volokh points out that the First Amendment protects opinions, honest mistakes and even knowing falsehoods about large groups. As he reads it, the statute's reference to "groups, classes or associations" is supposed to be read narrowly to include only very small groups. (The examples he uses from previous cases include "four officers of a corporation" or "twenty-five employees in a particular job category.") The prosecution sees otherwise:

The words "a group, class, or association" have ordinary meaning and do not require specific statutory definition. By the plain statutory language, the Montana Legislature intended criminal defamation to apply to more than just an individual. If the legislature intended criminal defamation to only apply to individuals, the statute would not also provide for defamation of a group, class, or association. Lenio seeks to have the Court read into the criminal defamation statute a requirement of a size of a group, class, or association. This strikes against the statutory construction rule against inserting language that was omitted by the legislature.

Additionally, Lenio looks to civil law to define the size of group of people defamed. This is problematic because in a civil claim for libel, an individual plaintiff must bring a suit to seek monetary damages, whereas in criminal law the State files charges against offenders on behalf of its citizens. State has a substantial interest in protecting society from threatening speech while the benefits derived from such speech are minuscule. Merely because the legislature defined criminal defamation distinctly from civil defamation does not render the criminal law overbroad.

But the law is overbroad. What Lenio posted was undeniably ugly, but it was still protected speech.

I think every jew on the planet deserves to be killed for what kikes have done to our #dollar and cost of living Killing jews > wage #slave ….

I’m a wage slave to ink and paper dollars we print to bailout jewish mega banks as kikes go on bout #WhitePrivilege & I’m not suppose to kill? …

#Copenhagen It’s important to note that jews hate free speech & are known bullsh-ters, could be #falseFlag So Hope for many REAL dead kikes

Now that the holocaust has been proven to be a lie Beyond a reasonable doubt, it is now time to hunt the Nazi hunters.

The prosecution has the law in their favor, as written. As intended, likely not. Criminalizing this sort of speech may be acceptable to those who believe the First Amendment covers far less area than it actually does, but it's a net loss for everyone if statutes like these are upheld. There is very little upside to exempting certain groups from criticism, especially religious groups -- an area of discussion where opinions are frequently heated and ill-informed. Being stupid, obnoxious or filled with irrational hatred is not a crime. Nor should it be. But if the state's higher court accepts the prosecution's reasoning, it will be -- at least for those in Montana.

If prosecutors get their way, the state of Montana will be no better than several countries where disparagement of certain religions is forbidden by law. This also spills over to areas far beyond what's covered in this court battle: special interest groups, sexual orientations, political parties, etc. Affected individuals, who dislike the ideas of others, will be able to avail themselves of a horribly-written statute to stifle First Amendment-protected speech.

As Volokh notes, there are criminal aspects to some of the postings made by Lenio (but many of those still reside in a gray area) and the prosecution should have limited itself to those alone. But it has overreached, with the assistance of a terribly-written law, and its desire to prosecute Lenio to the full extent of a bad law could have very serious repercussions for Montanans, who will find their speech more limited than residents of surrounding states.

Filed Under: david lenio, defamation, free speech, montana, religion

Copyrights & Patents Have Become A Religion; All Data Will Be Ignored

from the I-WANT-TO-BELIEVE dept

If you've read Techdirt for any length of time, you'll have noticed that intellectual property laws have been decoupled from logic for several years now. Because the entities heavily-reliant on IP protections (and who mostly serve as gatekeepers and middlemen, rather than perform any creative work of their own) have trouble producing evidence that extended copyright terms or increased enforcement efforts are actually instrumental to the creation of future artistic works, they have tended to fall back on assertions that various governments have a "duty" to protect their interests.

It's not an assertion borne of data or extensive research. It's a statement of faith. Record labels and movie studios spend millions every year issuing takedowns and lobbying for favorable laws. And every year, they fail to point out where these efforts have added to the bottom line. When confronted with this lack of evidence, they'll often declare this is only because we're not doing the things that aren't working hard enough or often enough or with enough severity.

Mark Lemley, whose work -- especially that focused on the broken patent system -- has been featured here before, has just published a paper examining this thought process: Faith-based Intellectual Property.

Lemley opens by noting that we supposedly live in an "age of reason," with a wealth of information and powerful data tools at our fingertips. But when the data fails to produce the desired evidence for increased IP protections, reason is swiftly abandoned and replaced with nothing more than unfounded beliefs.

This isn't just a post-file sharing phenomenon. This dates back more than a half-century.

Fritz Machlup, commissioned by Congress in the 1950s to evaluate the patent system, came to the strikingly wishy-washy conclusion that if we didn’t have a patent system, the evidence wouldn’t justify creating one, but since we had one the evidence didn’t justify abolishing it.

There's more evidence available now than there was 60 years ago, but nothing's improved.

The upshot of all this evidence is something rather less than a complete vindication of the theory of IP regulation... This doesn’t mean that we are no better off than we were in Fritz Machlup’s day. The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough evidence, or the right kind of evidence. The problem is that the picture the evidence paints is a complicated one. The relationship between patents and innovation seems to depend greatly on industry; some evidence suggests that the patent system is worth the cost in the biomedical industries but not elsewhere. Copyright industries seem to vary widely in how well they are responding to the challenge of the Internet, and their profitability doesn’t seem obviously related to the ease or frequency of piracy... Money doesn’t seem to be the prime motivator for most creators, and sometimes it can even suppress creativity. And an amazing number of people seem perfectly happy to create and share their work for free now that the Internet has given them the means to do so.

Despite the lack of clear indicators that strengthened IP laws result in more creativity, or at least, more profitability for industries which rely heavily on IP protections, the push for expanded terms and more draconian IP-enforcement penalties hasn't let up. When the available data doesn't support held beliefs, there are options.

Shoot the messenger:

A lesson I learned early in my academic career is that while people will dispute, ignore, or shrug off policy arguments they disagree with, they get really incensed when the data disagrees with them. And one way they can justify ignoring that data is to persuade themselves that the source of that data must be biased in some way and so their numbers cannot be trusted. The most vitriolic attacks I have experienced in more than twenty years as a law professor were directed at the most innocuous-seeming papers—papers that presented data that revealed some uncomfortable facts about the status quo.

Someone can be paid to produce data that agrees with held views.

A second reaction to data you don’t like is to try to go out and buy some of your own. Companies with a vested interest in a system that empirical evidence calls into question have been spending a great deal of money to fund studies written (sometimes preposterously) to lead to the conclusion they support.

Or, you know, 'find God," as it were...

Participants on both sides of the IP debates are increasingly staking out positions that simply do not depend on evidence at all. That is, their response to evidence that doesn’t accord with their beliefs is not to question their beliefs, or even to question the evidence, but to retreat to a belief system that doesn’t require evidence at all.

Lemley quotes Berkely's Rob Merges, a leading patent scholar -- one who turned to faith when the data didn't support his predispositions.

After decades at the forefront of economic analysis of the patent system, Merges threw up his hands: “Try as I might, I simply cannot justify our current IP system on the basis of verifiable data showing that people are better off with IP law than they would be without it.” While one might think that the logical thing to do if the evidence doesn’t support one’s theory is to question the theory, Merges instead observes that “through all the doubts over empirical proof, my faith in the necessity and importance of IP law has only grown.”

With adherents like these, who needs evidence? What were once a limited rights, granted for the betterment of all, are now an expansive rights, benefitting only a select few. Any lack of supporting evidence is no longer germane to the argument. IP rights are now being controlled by those who "feel" or "believe" in the fundamental "rightness" of their arguments. Data need not apply.

The adherents of this new religion believe in IP. They don’t believe it is better for the world than other systems, or that it encourages more innovation. Rather, they believe in IP as an end in itself—that IP is some kind of prepolitical right to which inventors and creators are entitled.

There's a reason why religions and governments shouldn't be allowed to intermingle. This adherence to the "moral" rights of creators plays hell with the system.

It intervenes in the market to interfere with the freedom of others to do what they want in hopes of achieving the end of encouraging creativity. If we take that purpose out of the equation, we are left with a belief system that says the government should restrict your speech and freedom of action in favor of mine, not because doing so will improve the world, but simply because I spoke first.

When the faithful guide the creation of legislation, bad things happen -- things that undermine the societal benefits of limited rights for a limited amount of time. Those limits are no longer in place, and supposed protections like "fair use" give more value to intellectual property than freedom of expression. The system is broken and those exploiting it the most don't want it fixed.

Trademark rights extend to prevent uses that would happily have coexisted fifty years ago. We have added a slew of new copyright statutes, expanding the term as well as the scope of protection, increasing penalties, and reaching conduct further and further removed from actual infringers. We issued six times as many patents in 2014 as we did three decades before, and most of the patent suits filed are brought by patent trolls, a category of plaintiffs that didn’t even exist forty years ago and that one might think has a weaker moral claim on IP than people who actually make products.

Unfortunately, Lemley realizes the ultimate futility of his research. While small factual misconceptions can often be corrected, adherents to any form of faith-based system (whether they be pro- or anti-IP) are almost impervious to arguments that run contrary to their beliefs -- no matter how much data is provided.

If you are a true believer, we have nothing to say to each other. I don’t mean by that that I am giving up on you, deciding that you’re not worth my time to persuade. Rather, I mean that we simply cannot speak the same language. There is no principled way to compare one person’s claim to lost freedom to another’s claim to a right to ownership. Nor is there a way to weigh your claim of moral entitlement against evidence that the exercise of that right actually reduces creativity by others. Faith-based IP is at its base a religion and not a science because it does not admit the prospect of being proven wrong.

This where we are today: subject to laws written to accommodate true believers. The faithful that have been indulged in their expansion efforts even while a whole host of supposed "industry killers" have risen and fallen with little to no discernible damage done to entrenched IP-reliant industries.

Filed Under: belief, copyrights, evidence, faith-based, mark lemley, patents, religion, research, trademark

Student's Free Speech Victory Is A Victory For Everyone Even If You Disagree With His Speech

from the your-right-to-say-it dept

As strong proponents of free speech, we've made the point in the past that protecting the freedom of speech is going to necessitate protecting it for the kind of speech you wouldn't typically like to exist. Put another way, it's quite easy to be in favor of free speech when you aren't the one offended. It takes much more mental courage to stick up for the protected speech of a Nazi, a bigot, a sexist, or an idiot.

Or, as in this case, someone who ascribes to religious thoughts with which you may not agree. The story of then high school student Daniel Glowacki, who was kicked out of class simply for saying that his Catholicism didn't allow him to accept homosexuals, acts as a lesson in protecting the speech of others. It began, as you'd never expect, in a Michigan classroom, with a child wearing confederate flag belt. When the teacher, Johnson McDowell asked her to remove the belt, Glowacki pointed out that the teachers were all wearing purple for "Anti-Bullying Day." That's when things took a turn:

The teacher testified that he gave Glowacki an explanation on the difference in symbolism between the confederate and rainbow flag, to which Glowacki responded, "I don't accept gays because I am Catholic." Glowacki was instructed to leave and another student who shared the same belief asked to leave with him. According to affidavits from other students in the classroom, McDowell told them that "students cannot voice an opinion that creates an uncomfortable learning environment for another."

Which, for those of you who may not remember what school was like, is complete and utter nonsense. More to the point, speech is absolutely protected. That's why the fact that McDowell then kicked the students out of the class was a massive misstep. Despite the myth, students do not leave their constitutional rights at the doorway of their public school.

Now, it would be quite easy for me, and many like me, to say that Glowacki's beliefs are bigoted, homophobic, wrong, and outdated. And I do say every single one of those things. But I'd be damned before I allow his right to say exactly what he said to be infringed upon. The thing about insisting that free speech is afforded the right to offend, regardless of any discomfort for those around us, is it cuts both ways. If we're going to insist that we keep any sort of mandatory religion out of public schools (and we should), and if we're going to insist the curriculum be secular (and we should), then we also have to afford those that don't agree their right to voice their opposition.

Here's the good news: it seems like nearly everyone involved in this case agrees, and they even did so without resorting to over-the-top punitive nonsense.

However, the school district disagreed with his reason of reprimand, stating that it was based on McDowell's own personal offense [and] Judge Duggan held that the teacher violated the student's First Amendment rights by engaging in viewpoint discrimination.

"As a reasonable teacher, McDowell should have known that Daniel's protected speech could not serve as the basis for discipline or as the basis for believing a school district policy was violated," the judge said.

McDowell's punishment? $1 in damages to Glowacki. It might seem like a small amount for having violated a child's constitutional right to speech, but come on, this ended perfectly. The lesson isn't in the punishment. The lesson is that the enlightened position on speech is the protection of unenlightened speech.

Filed Under: daniel glowacki, free speech, religion, schools

School District Wins Suit Filed Against It By Student Who Refused To Wear School-Issued Location Tracking ID Cards

from the another-'win'-for-school-administration----go-school! dept

Back in November we covered the story of a Texas student whose refusal to wear a school-issued ID card with an embedded RFID chip led to her suspension. Her family, along with the Rutherford Institute, took the school district to court, seeking a temporary restraining order which would allow the student to return to her school without wearing the Smart ID card.

The student's parents cited religious objections to the ID card/tracking device and the filing pointed out that requiring her to wear the badge violated both her First Amendment rights (by compelling speech -- conveying a message she didn't agree with) and the Texas Freedom of Religion Act.

Considering the whole program itself was implemented almost solely in hopes of securing more funding by boosting attendance numbers and that the district had no specific policies in place when it began requiring the ID cards, one would hope that we'd be hearing of the student's return to school sans ID when the decision came down.

Unfortunately, the court's decision went the other way, and Andrea Hernandez has until January 18th to decide whether to wear the badge and return to her original school or transfer to another district school that has yet to implement the Smart ID cards.

A Texas high school student who claimed her student identification was the “Mark of the Beast” because it was implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip has lost her federal court bid Tuesday challenging her suspension for refusing to wear the card around her neck...

[Judge Orlando Garcia] tentatively halted the suspension, but changed course Tuesday after concluding that the 15-year-old’s right of religion was not breached...

Hernandez's family feels the ID card and embedded chip represent the "Mark of the Beast" as detailed in Revelations 13:16-18. The school's counteroffer -- to have Andrea wear the badge without the RFID chip -- was rejected by her family, which still felt the badge itself was representative of the Antichrist. Judge Garcia saw it differently, however.

“The accommodation offered by the district is not only reasonable it removes plaintiff’s religious objection from legal scrutiny all together,” (.pdf) U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia wrote.

The Rutherford Institute plans to appeal this decision, claiming this decision is "not permissible under our constitutional scheme" and turns the district court into "an arbiter of what is and is not religious."

The Institute has a point, for whatever it's worth. Hernandez's parents claimed that both the ID card and the embedded chip were offensive to their religious beliefs but the court here seems to have decided the compromise offered by the district negates the family's opinion on the chip-less ID card. The school's offer to transfer the student to another school within the district is also reasonable on its face, but it does take away a few options -- namely, the classes Hernandez was attending this specific school for.

The school's interest in having Hernandez only appear to support the program could probably use some further examination as well, although angling for outward complicity isn't a violation of rights in and of itself. It does "compel" speech in a way, but more than simply rubbing the First Amendment the wrong way, it sends a message about what's truly important to the school district: that students show "support" for the district's policies... even if they object to them.

Filed Under: free speech, religion, rfid, school district, texas

Kopimism Approved As Official Religion In Sweden: File Sharing Now Protected Under Freedom Of Religion Laws?

from the probably-not... dept

Last year, we poked some fun at the folks in Sweden who were trying to create the religion of Kopimism, in which "copying and the sharing of information is the most beautiful thing in the world." While there were some bureaucratic problems, and at least one rejection of the plan, it turns out that at the very end of the year, Kopimism became an officially recognized religion in Sweden.

"Being recognized by the state of Sweden is a large step for all of kopimi. Hopefully, this is one step towards the day when we can live out our faith without fear of persecution", says Isak Gerson, spiritual leader of the Church of Kopimism.

Of course, while some are claiming that this may effectively legalize file sharing for members of the "religion," I doubt that's accurate. There are plenty of religious practices that are deemed illegal. It can create some legal fights, but it certainly doesn't automatically legalize all religious practices (think: bigamy, human sacrifice, etc.).

To be honest, while this is amusing and does a nice of job of pointing out the ridiculousness of trying to clamp down on culture, I'm not sure it does much beyond being a little publicity stunt. For those who think stronger copyright laws are a good thing, this certainly isn't going to convince them of the error of their ways, and will simply reaffirm the belief that those opposing the excessive nature of copyright laws today are not to be taken seriously. Of course, the flip side of that argument is that today's copyright laws are a complete joke themselves, so perhaps the most reasonable response is to make an even bigger joke out of them...

Filed Under: file sharing, information, kopimism, religion, sweden

The Pirate Party Not Pirate-y Enough For You? Maybe You Need Kopimism, The Official Pirate Religion

from the ctrl-c-and-ctrl-v-are-on-the-verge-of-sainthood dept

Kopimism, founded by 19-year-old philosophy student, Isaac Gerson, is a new (still unaccredited) religion that believes "copying and the sharing of information is the most beautiful thing in the world." Having your information copied is a sign of respect and indicates that people believe you have done something well.

As a loyal member of the Freetardianism religion (kind of like Rastafarianism, only with more Kool-Aid and less smoke), I was visited by our mutal patron saint, Savelinkas, during a brief evening vision/blackout. The following words were seared into my brain like some sort of overly-long cattle brand and once I arrived home, I swiftly wrote down the saint's words, each one more astounding than the last. 

The Kopimism Path of Enchanted Light and Enlightened Chants, Chapter 1:

1. Now it came to pass in that day that the people spake to Isaac and said, &qout;Isaac, who will hear our lamentations and heed our cries? For lo, we are beset on all sides by oppressors. Is there none that will lessen our load, and indeed, our download times?"


2. The people cried as one, "We have been laid bare by their divinations. They have acted against us in malice. We have had our domains seized, our servers confiscated, our mellows harshed."


3. "We have seen brethren removed from their homes, connections cut, packets sniffed and motives vilified. Verily, we have been assailed by men who know not that of which they speak. They mix lies with the truth and mangle metaphors. They seek only vengeance and obscene amounts of damages."


4. And Isaac heard their lamentations and gathered unto him an alliance. He spake to them in urgent tones full of vigor and perhaps some illicit substances.


5. He said, "Is it just me or are my hands reaaaallly big right now? Also sharing, which has been derided as foul piracy, is unjustly punished within our borders, and indeed, amongst our brethren scattered throughout the many lands."


6. "We have been made villains and spectres among the living and have borne undue scrutiny for our acts. I will take our complaints to the mountain and speak with our Savior, Falkvinge, in hopes that he will act on behalf of his many acolytes who seek justice."


7. Adding, "Isn't sharing files like the most beautiful thing ever?"


8. And Isaac travelled to the mountain to seek justice for his people, travelling through harsh climes and multiple allegories.


9. Isaac spoke to Falkvinge of his people's travails. He laid bare his plan for a new religion, borne of his people's desire to freely share, seeking Falkvinge's blessing.


10. He said, "We seek understanding and respect for our actions and an ending to this oppression. We have looked to the government for help and have been cast out and deemed unclean. Canst thou not use thy 'pull' to grant our beliefs credibility?"


11. A thunderous sigh, borne of disappointment rather than anger, filled the air. Falkvinge spoke, shaking the mountain:


12. "Have I not given thee rules to abide by? Have I not made myself clear repeatedly? What commandments have I passed down to thee, in regards to these things?"


13. "Let's review. When drinking or otherwise impaired, thou shalt not discuss:
    • religion
    • politics
    • which actor was the consummate James Bond/Dr. Who."


14. "Neither shall thou maketh any bold proclamations or promises to others whilst influenced, in order that thou dost not raise false hopes within the people. And what have you done?"


15. And Isaac was afraid and he covered his face as his shame was laid bare and he did not answer for he had nothing.


16. "You have combined all of these 'shalt nots' into a half-assed scheme that shall surely maketh a mockery of us all! You have even forced me to use exclamation points, which are not normally found in religious texts! Roger Moore? Seriously?"


17. And Isaac protested, "But surely, Lord, you realize that the government is thick with corruption and greed, unlike major world religions. And surely you can recognize that without change from within, our people are surely fuckt?"


18. And Falkvinge hedged a bit and said he would "see what he could do" but "wouldst make no promises" and retired to his black-lit lair for a bit of a nap.


19. Isaac returned to his people with great haste and good cheer, delivering a hearty "definite maybe." A feast of epic proportions was planned but no one couldst agree on a date and it kind of fell apart after that.

Filed Under: file sharing, kopimism, religion

Electronic Arts Stages Protest of Dante's Inferno at E3

from the it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time dept

At the E3 Expo a few weeks ago, Electronic Arts showcased an upcoming game, Dante's Inferno, to awkward protests from a group of concerned Christians going under the name, "Salvationists Against Virtual and Eternal Damnation." They had signs like "Trade in your PlayStation for a PrayStation," "Cheat codes won't save your soul," and "Hell is not a game," as well as a 1996-esque website complete with animated GIFs and multi-colored all-caps text. The protest was covered by the LA Times, the San Jose Mercury News and many gaming blogs. That sort of controversy might make the game more appealing to some... except, EA admitted that the protest was entirely staged by the viral marketing firm that they hired (though, it didn't fool everyone).

As the popular gaming blog Joystiq puts it, there's got to be a better way to promote the game. A faux controversy might seem like a clever idea, until people realize it's just a publicity stunt. Plus, it doesn't seem very smart to alienate Christians when you could be selling them the game instead (as Thomas Peters from AmericanPapist.com writes, "getting to play Dante as he slashes his way through hell? It sure beats Tetris."). Electronic Arts recently landed in some hot water for another clever viral marketing idea, which involved shipping brass knuckles with the Godfather II press kit, despite mere possession being a first-degree misdemeanor in some states to which they were shipped. They get points for creativity, but they might want to think twice before acting on some of these ideas...

Filed Under: dante's inferno, publicity stunt, religion, video games
Companies: ea

Vatican Says Hold On With Those .religion TLDs

from the ICANN-has-lots-of-domain-fun dept

ICANN is having one of its regular meetings in Mexico City, the kind where proposals for all the latest and greatest top-level domains get kicked around. But some TLDs you may not be seeing soon are .catholic, or .hindu, or .churchofthefsm, after The Vatican said it didn't think it was a good idea. Essentially, they don't like the idea of some registrar or other group being given control of the TLD of a particular religious tradition, with ICANN forced to determine who gets to be the gatekeeper for each particular set of beliefs. It remains to be seen how this will fit in with ICANN's plans to open up the TLD system, which would let people register nearly any TLD they wanted (assuming they fork over the requisite amount of cash, of course). Throwing the system open would certainly seem to be setting the stage for a huge number of disputes, as companies fight over who should get to own something like .apple. By allowing .religion TLDs, ICANN could be setting things up for holy cyberwars -- but if it's going to open things up, should it be playing censor, or determining who the rightful "owner" of each religion's TLD should be?

Filed Under: religion, tlds, vatican