If You Want To Know Why Section 230 Matters, Just Ask Wikimedia: Without It, There'd Be No Wikipedia

from the also-just-grow-up,-china dept

It sometimes seems that Techdirt spends half its time debunking bad ideas for reforming or even repealing Section 230. In fact, so many people seem to get the law wrong that Mike was moved to write a detailed post on the subject with the self-explanatory title "Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act". It may be necessary (and tiresome) work rebutting all this wrongness, but it's nice for a change to be able to demonstrate precisely why Section 230 is so important. A recent court ruling provides just such an example:

On September 15th, in a victory for the Wikimedia movement and for all user-driven projects online, a Florida judge dismissed claims of defamation, invasion of privacy, and infliction of emotional distress against the Wikimedia Foundation. The judge found that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes the Wikimedia Foundation from liability for third-party content republished on Wikipedia. In other words, Section 230 helps Wikimedia safely host the work of Wikipedia's contributors and enables the effective volunteer-led moderation of content on the projects.

As the Wikimedia blog post notes, this was an absolutely crucial result. If collaborative projects that are created, maintained, and curated by volunteers could be held liable every time a user contributed something that was inaccurate or offensive, none of them would last very long -- not least because they generally lack the resources to fight expensive court cases. Back in 2017, Wikimedia wrote a detailed post on Section 230, and why it made Wikipedia and other sites possible

The court's ruling is a big win for Wikimedia. On the other hand, in something of a (minor) defeat, China has yet again blocked the Wikimedia Foundation's application for observer status at WIPO -- the only country to object. This is the second time it has done so, and for the same reason:

As in 2020, China's statement falsely suggested that the Wikimedia Foundation was spreading disinformation via the independent, volunteer-led Wikimedia Taiwan chapter. The United States and the group of industrialized countries at WIPO -- which also includes many European Union member states, Australia, Canada, the Holy See, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom -- expressed their support for the Foundation's application. Since WIPO is generally run by consensus, any one country may veto accreditation requests by non-governmental organizations.

China's blocking of a small, apolitical organization that aims to promote knowledge around the world just looks incredibly petty, and is hardly befitting for a world power.

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Filed Under: china, defamation, free speech, internet platforms, section 230, taiwan, wikipedia, wipo
Companies: wikimedia foundation, wikipedia

China Blocks Wikimedia From WIPO... Because There's A Taiwanese Wikimedia Chapter

from the petty dept

The World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO, who has a long history of poor decision making despite its crucial role in helping to define standards regarding copyright and patent rules around the globe, is now letting China block Wikimedia from having "observer status." As Tersa Nobre from Communia notes, tons of civil society/public interest orgs have been granted observer status at WIPO, including EFF, Creative Commons and others. In fact, the only other time anyone can remember an organization being blocked is when Pirate Parties International was blocked. Indeed, when we wrote about that, we noted that it coincided with WIPO granting observer status to an organization that claimed its goal was to "free individuals and organizations from space lizards' control." Really.

In other words, it's not that common for WIPO to block anyone from observer status.

So why was Wikimedia blocked? The answer is that China doesn't like the fact that Wikimedia Taiwan exists.

China was the only country to raise objections to the accreditation of the Wikimedia Foundation as an official observer. Their last-minute objections claimed Wikimedia’s application was incomplete, and suggested that the Wikimedia Foundation was carrying out political activities via the volunteer-led Wikimedia Taiwan chapter. The United Kingdom and the United States voiced support for the Foundation’s application.

This is just petty assholery by the Chinese government and its infatuation with denying Taiwan's independent existence. Again, the Wikimedia Taiwanese chapter is an effort by volunteers in Taiwan. And, so what? How is that chapter going to have any impact whatsoever on Wikimedia's observer status at WIPO? Does China really believe that because there's a volunteer effort to support Wikimedia in Taiwan, it's somehow impossible for Wikimedia to be an observer at WIPO?

If China is legitimately arguing that no one should be able to engage in any international organization if they have some loose connection to Taiwan, they're going to find that not many organizations are able to participate. There is no legitimate reason for China to do this, and all it does is call that much more attention to China's obsessive attitude over the existence of an independent Taiwan.

Filed Under: china, observer, taiwan, wipo
Companies: wikimedia

More Video Game Art Is Being Sanitized, Likely To Appease China

from the fragility-on-display dept

Mere days ago, we were talking about Activision's decision to do a delete and replace for the trailer for the latest Call of Duty game worldwide due to pressure from the Chinese government. That pressure came about over 1 second's worth of footage in the trailer that showed an image from pro-democracy protests in 1989. While only a trailer for an un-released game, the point I attempted to make is that this was a terrible precedent to set. It's one thing to sanitize games, a form of art, for distribution within China. We could spend hours arguing over just how willing companies should be in bowing to the thin-skin of the Chinese government when it comes to art in favor of making huge sums of money, but that's at least understandable. It makes far less sense to apply those changes to the larger world, where China's pearl-clutching sensibilities aren't a thing.

And now we're seeing this continue to occur. Kotaku has a quick write up for several changes made to a handful of re-released retro games and this appears to be more of the same. We'll start with the re-release of Baseball Stars 2, a Neo Geo classic.

Baseball Stars 2 was released on the Neo Geo in 1992 (one year after the greatest baseball game ever made, with which it has a lot in common), and for the last 28 years has been just fine with teams like the “Tokyo Ninjas” and “Spanish Galleons”. The “Taipei Hawks”, however, have just been removed from a console version of the game following an update earlier this week. As noted on this Reddit post and this Twitter thread by users, an update for the PS4, Xbox One and Switch version released in 2019 had removed the team names (and country flags) for both the “Taipei Hawks” and the “Taiwan Dragons”, while leaving all the other names like the “Seoul Dragons” in place.

This 2019 console version of the game was ported by Japanese studio Hamster Corporation, but the rights to the game are held by publisher SNK, which in 2015 was purchased by Chinese company 37Games.

Again, while these are small changes, we now have a trend. That trend consists of changes made to appease the Chinese government in video games being applied to worldwide releases. And this isn't merely some workload thing, where game companies don't want to make changes to regional distributions of games. The Steam version of the game, for instance, is even more different, with teams not having real-world locales, instead only the mascot nicknames.

Why is an American, a Russian, or a South American gamer having to feel the effects of Chinese censorship?

This isn't the only retro game in which this occurred, in fact. Art of Fighting 2 was recently re-released on the PC. In that game, the Japanese "rising sun" flag, which still serves as the Japanese Navy's flag, was removed from the game and replaced with a banner that just says "karate".

At the same time, it appears that another SNK-published title, Art of Fighting 2 on the PC, received a similar update this week, where a depiction of the controversial “Rising Sun” Japanese flag was replaced with a white flag that says “KARATE”:

This one is harder to pin on China. After all, most complaints about this flag, which occasionally shows up in real-world sporting events, come from South Korea. During plans for the 2020 Olympics, in fact, South Korea requested the flag be banned from the games entirely due to the sordid history of the Japanese Navy during Japanese occupation of South Korea. But South Korea wasn't the only country occupied and terrorized under that flag.

Based on a historical experience of Japanese invasion, China's reaction to the rising sun flag at the Olympics could be similar to South Korea's. After the Japanese military took the Chinese city of Nanjing in 1937, Japanese troops embarked on a months-long campaign of murder, rape and looting in what became one of the worst massacres of the war.

According to Chinese estimates, around 300,000 people were killed, many of them women and children, and around 20,000 women raped. Yet there's little protest from China about the flag.

So which country was this change made to appease: China or South Korea? We don't know, but neither answer is good. If it's China, this is now at least the third instance of the trend of appeasing that country's government in a way that effects art worldwide. If South Korea, then it indicates that the trend instead might be for other countries that want to engage in the same kind of censorship jumping on the bandwagon.

We're still at the "video game art and trailers" level of all of this, so it's understandable for some not to care all the much. But how much further does this have to go before people will care?

Filed Under: baseball stars 2, china, edits, taiwan, video games

Blizzard Loses First Sponsor Due To Stance On Hong Kong Speech

from the in-the-pocketbook dept

Just a quick update on Blizzard and the ongoing backlash against the company over its attempts to muzzle its eSports competitors from making "political" comments about "politics", which mostly means not pissing off the laughably thin-skinned Chinese government over the fact that Hong Kong exists. It started when the company yoinked away prize money and issued a 1 year ban to a Hearthstone player, continued as it then issued more bans, then got weird when it decided to try to appease the backlashing public by halving that original ban, all of which led to basically everyone other than Beijing remarking on how totally shitty Blizzard is.

There has been a sense thus far that Blizzard believed it could lighten its punishments and run out the clock on the backlash, as the public moved on to whatever the next outrage would be. How is that going? Pretty fucking terribly, given that Blizzard just lost its first corporate sponsor due to its anti-speech actions.

When Blizzard decided to take action against a pro Hearthstone player for speaking out over the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, they ate a lot of shit from fans. They also, it turns out, lost a commercial sponsor in the form of Mitsubishi Motors.

The Taiwanese branch of the Japanese auto giant had been a sponsor of all of Blizzard’s esports events, but just two days after Blizzard’s decision to sanction Blitzchung for his actions, Mitsubishi Motors withdrew its support.

That this came from a Japanese company's branch in Taiwan is probably not without significance. At the risk of sounding ignorant through over-simplification, the status of Taiwan and Hong Kong share similarities. Indeed, Taiwan's President has spoken in solidarity with the protesters in Hong Kong.

More interesting is whether this is some kind of a one-off or a sign that the boycott floodgates are about to open. If this initial exodus of an advertiser triggers more advertisers to leave, suddenly the calculus for Blizzard on the cost and benefits of bowing to Chinese pressure may change. And change quickly. If that occurs, it will be fact that Blizzard will have painted itself into a corner. After all, it can't suddenly now reverse course and encourage its competitors to speak openly and maintain credibility. It also won't be able to dig its heels in further, or it risks losing even more advertising revenue.

I imagine there are several Blizzard executives shivering in their offices at the moment, all because they wouldn't allow their company to back up competitors speaking their minds.

Filed Under: advertising, boycotts, china, e-sports, free speech, heathstone, hong kong, sponsorship, taiwan
Companies: blizzard, mitsubishi

Parody Protection For Fair Use Is Important: Taiwanese Man Faces Jail Time Over Parody Videos Of Movies

from the unfair-abuse dept

Because we talk so much about fair use here, we often likewise find ourselves talking about parody. Parody is one of the forms of content protected under fair use, and that protection is responsible for the availability of a great deal of great content. Parody tends to be equal parts humor and commentary and enjoys a long history of important speech here in America.

But parody doesn't have that protected status in intellectual property laws abroad. Taiwan, for instance, has a form of fair use protections, but those protections carve out no space for parody. This has resulted in local film studios going after one popular YouTuber in such a way as to include law enforcement raids of his offices and the threat of very real jail time.

Chung Wei-ding, more famously known as AmoGood ... makes videos of big screen films, where he often humourously summarises their plot with quick-speaking voiceover. He's done parodies of local films, as well as Hollywood blockbusters like 50 Shades of Grey and Guardians of the Galaxy. AmoGood has over 990,000 subscribers, who often virally share his creations on social media.

But Taiwanese film studio AutoAi Design, and streaming platform KKTV, say 31-year-old infringed on the studios' copyright. AutoAi Design, which distributed films like Doraemon: Nobita's Space Heroes in Taiwan, also said that AmoGood's critiques have greatly dented its ticket sales at the box office. Taiwanese prosecutors obtained a warrant to raid his company premises for evidence, and the YouTuber was called into a Taipei police station for questioning last week, the China Post reported.

You will immediately see the stark difference in treatment between Wei-ding and his American counterparts, such as CinemaSins, which likewise produces parody commentary on blockbuster films. These short-ish videos laced with wicked humor and short clips throughout the films which they comment on are clearly transformative on their own, but its their clear status as parody that protects them in America. Wei-ding doesn't have that status to rely on, though some media reports indicate that he may be in trouble for other reasons as well.

AmoGood may be in a bind in Taiwan, whose media laws don't count parodies as fair use. The territory's courts are likely to consider other factors too, such as whether the work takes away potential sales or viewers from the original work. Additionally, reports have speculated that AmoGood downloads the source films illegally, since he's able to produce the parodies so quickly after their box office debut.

Any copyright claim on him pirating the films would, however, be entirely separate from the charge that his videos themselves are infringing. And, when asked by the film studios targeting him, their comments are all about his videos, not from where he sourced his material. In those comments demonstrate the importance of protecting parody in order to stave off the obstruction of speech over hurt feelings.

Some Taiwanese filmmakers aren't fans. A couple of them told Apple Daily that his videos were "disrespectful" to their movies.

"Each film is the brainchild of directors and producers, and this guy just took it and made fun of it," Kevin Chu — the director of Taiwanese hits like Kung Fu Dunk — told Apple Daily. "I don't believe that this is considered fair use. It's disrespect."

It goes without saying that whether his films are disrespectful or not has no bearing on whether or not his videos ought to be covered by fair use. But when you leave that door open by failing to protect parody, these are the types of arguments you'll get from film studios. For all of this, Wei-ding faces up to five years in prison on top of civil penalties for his parody videos. If that doesn't strike you as crazy, it should.

Filed Under: amogood, chung wei-ding, copyright, fair use, parody, taiwan
Companies: autoai, kktv

Taiwan Nannies Rule: Parents Can't Decide How Much Time Their Kids Spend With Electronics

from the mama-government dept

The nanny-state arms race marches on, apparently. Whereas the previous intersection of overbearing government and technology has resulted in politicians attempting to ban the use of headphones while walking across the street, governments introducing all manner of silly policies in the name of "protecting the children", and even municipalities attempting to run psy-ops on citizens to keep them from smoking, Taiwan appears to be taking an even more direct approach with plans to fine the parents of children the government has deemed spend too much time with electronics.

Under rules passed last Friday by Taiwanese politicians, children under the age of two should be completely banned from using electronic devices, Xinhua, China's official news agency reported. Meanwhile under-18s should not be allowed to "constantly use electronic products for a period of time that is not reasonable". It means electronic products are now listed alongside cigarettes and alcohol as potentially dangerous vices.

And you can see their point, assuming you're a crazy person. Because electronics are tools primarily of communication and productivity, even if they're also used for entertainment, and government intrusion on young people's ability to communicate, learn, and be entertained is so far removed from alcohol and tobacco that one wonders how the argument was made with a straight face to begin with. The prospective "too much time" part of this legal equation has yet to be ironed out, but the brainchild for the law is, shall we say, more than slightly aggressive on the topic.

The new regulation is the brainchild of Lu Shiow-yen, a Taiwanese member of parliament who said his intention was to protect young people by stopping them using electronic devices for more than 30 minutes at a time. Parents who break the rules can be hit with fines of up to about £1,000 although it remains unclear how authorities will determine what amount of time is unreasonable.

There's a million reasons why this is stupid, but I'll boil it down to one specific reason: baseball. Baseball is huge in Taiwan. Baseball is enjoyed primarily on television and streaming electronic devices. And baseball, for all its wonderful aspects, takes roughly as much time as it takes for a mountain to form in the Nebraska prairie. Thirty-minute stretches of time as a limit effectively outlaws youngsters watching baseball. Put in that context, and really any other context, these sorts of artificial limitations on the electronics that dominate our lives (in a good way) are ludicrous.

Expect either the backlash here to be huge, or the law to go largely ignored. Either way, this is a political non-starter.

Filed Under: children, devices, electronics, kids, nanny state, parents, screen time, taiwan

Taiwan's g0v: Using Open-Source Code And Communities To Engage Citizens And Make Government More Open

from the building-on-sunflowers dept

Back in April, we wrote about massive protests that took place in Taiwan as a result of a lack of transparency during trade negotiations with mainland China. Those protests became part of what is now known as the Sunflower student movement, whose name refers to the use of sunflowers by the protesters as a symbol of hope. Techpresident has a fascinating article looking at the Taiwanese online community called g0v, which has been playing a key part in the Sunflower movement, and which is now trying to make government more open and accessible using open source tools:

g0v believes that current online participation tools like social media outlets and online message boards fell short in creating offline action or collaboration. g0v places itself at the center of open-sourced, hands-on, and public-spirited activism with a desire to engage citizens to create real social change.

g0v's work is proving that open-source communities can successfully open up and improve government. Ideologically, g0v does not believe that its activism needs to create an enemy out of government, but rather that everyone -- the government and the people -- wins when creative solutions improve existing public structures.

The post goes on to describe g0v's hackathons, its first conference, and the Open Political Donation Project. This brought together 9,000 volunteers to digitize 300,000 political donation records as a pointed response to Taiwan's old Campaign Donation Act of 2004, which allowed the public access to campaign donation documents, but only as a paper copy, or in person at a government office.

What's fascinating here is to see how the people involved in the Sunflower student movement have moved on from simply protesting against something -- Taiwan's secret trade negotiations with China -- to creating new tools to open up government and engage citizens. As the Techpresident piece concludes:

g0v's brand of activism is about making sure government does its job better. g0v explains on its website, it substituted the "o" in gov for a "0" to change the way we see government working. Through civic tech, hacktivism, and a belief that government can and should work, g0v is already showing that it can change the way that government sees itself and the way that people can interact with their government.

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Filed Under: activists, communities, engagement, g0v, open government, politics, taiwan