If There's A Defamatory Review On Yelp, Is It Google's Job To Hide It?

from the always-a-way dept

One point that we keep trying to make in the various debates about content moderation and Section 230 in particular is that the second you give people a legal method through which they can seek to remove unflattering information from the internet, they will use it... and abuse it. We've seen it for decades with the DMCA, certainly, which is regularly abused to try to remove unflattering information even if it has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright. We've also seen it in the context of fake defamation lawsuits.

Of course, it also opens up some other scenarios as well, which Yelp recently discovered when Google alerted the company that one of its pages, about an auction house in Knoxville, Tennessee, was going to be delisted from Google's index. Why? Well, according to the takedown letter that was sent to Google, by Wray Williams, the owner of the auction house, the statements on the website were found to be defamatory.

The Permanent Injunction that is attached covers the defamatory remarks which include all of the content that was posted by defendant, Kim Babel, on multiple Websites. The last 2 paragraphs of page 2 of the Injunction cover removing postings and Kim Babel being prohibited from further postings or republishing the defamatory statements.

And, indeed, the takedown letter includes an injunction issued by the court, back in 2012. The injunction applies to the person who allegedly posted the content (apparently Kim Babel), saying that she is enjoined from reposting the content to RipoffReport. There is then a handwritten addition saying "or any other online forum" though it's not entirely clear who wrote that.

It might be the judge. I'm no handwriting expert, but the handwriting does look maybe similar to the judge's handwriting entering the date at the end.

So, if we accept that a jury found the defendant to have defamed the company, you can understand how there's an interesting conundrum here. Contrary to what the anti-Section 230 crowd insist, most websites, including Google, do take it seriously when there are court orders regarding defamatory content, and they do seek to deal with it. And yet... there have to be some questions raised about this result. First of all, the injunction is against the woman who was found by the court to have posted the reviews. It talks about RipoffReport, but not Yelp (though there is the hand-scrawled message on the injunction).

But, as it stands, anyone searching for this auction house on Google, will not be shown the Yelp page (which has two reviews, both of them just one star). To Wray Williams credit, he responds to both of the reviews, though with the second one he does so to point out that the review was ruled to be defamatory. If you search for the same business on YouTube, you see that Google Review has 30 reviews with an average rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars. Google will also show you reviews from Facebook, which are also all positive.

So, in the end, I'm not sure what's the best result here. If the content is truly defamatory, then it seems reasonable to ask for it to be taken down. But it seems that the auction house should have sent the request to Yelp, rather than to Google. Yelp might then be in a position to review the court ruling and determine whether or not it wanted to pull down the review -- which it very well might. And, in that scenario, then people searching on Google would still also be able to see the Yelp reviews.

It does seem at least marginally curious that there are so few Yelp reviews, and so many Google reviews. In my experience the reverse is often true, though perhaps that's changing. Perhaps if the auction house hadn't nuked the entire page from Google there would actually be more Yelp reviews for the auction house (and perhaps those would have been more positive).

The larger issue, to me, once again is what is the remedy for the situation. And when we're dealing with content on other sites (such as Yelp), it seems dangerous to put that issue on Google to decide. I understand the basic thinking behind it -- given how much traffic Google drives. But also, it seems worrisome that Google's only response is a sledge hammer approach that removes all access to that page. Perhaps it "feels" right in this scenario in which there are just those two negative reviews, and one has been adjudicated as defamatory -- but what if there were a bunch of reviews, and the vast majority of them were legit (good or bad)? The fact that this results in Google just removing the entire page from its index, feels like going too far.

Filed Under: defamation, intermediaries, reviews, search, takedowns, third parties
Companies: google, yelp

GCHQ Propose A 'Going Dark' Workaround That Creates The Same User Trust Problem Encryption Backdoors Do

from the wiretaps-but-for-Whatsapp dept

Are we "going dark?" The FBI certainly seems to believe so, although its estimation of the size of the problem was based on extremely inflated numbers. Other government agencies haven't expressed nearly as much concern, even as default encryption has spread to cover devices and communications platforms.

There are solutions out there, if it is as much of a problem as certain people believe. (It really isn't… at least not yet.) But most of these solutions ignore workarounds like accessing cloud storage or consensual searches in favor of demanding across-the-board weakening/breaking of encryption.

A few more suggestions have surfaced over at Lawfare. The caveat is that both authors, Ian Levy and Crispin Robinson, work for GCHQ. So that should give you some idea of which shareholders are being represented in this addition to the encryption debate.

The idea (there's really only one presented here) isn't as horrible as others suggested by law enforcement and intelligence officials. But that doesn't mean it's a good one. And there's simply no way to plunge into this without addressing an assertion made without supporting evidence towards the beginning of this Lawfare piece.

Any functioning democracy will ensure that its law enforcement and intelligence methods are overseen independently, and that the public can be assured that any intrusions into people’s lives are necessary and proportionate.

By that definition, the authors' home country is excluded from the list of "functioning democracies." Multiple rulings have found GCHQ's surveillance efforts in violation of UK law. And a number of leaks over the past half-decade have shown its oversight is mostly ornamental.

The same can be said for the "functioning democracy" on this side of the pond. Leaked documents and court orders have shown the NSA frequently ignores its oversight when not actively hiding information from Congress, the Inspector General, and the FISA court. Oversight of our nation's law enforcement agencies is a patchwork of dysfunction, starting with friendly magistrates who care little about warrant affidavit contents and ending with various police oversight groups that are either filled with cops or cut out of the process by the agencies they nominally oversee. We can't even get a grip on routine misconduct, much less ensure "necessary and proportionate intrusions into people's lives."

According to the two GCHQ reps, there's a simple solution to eavesdropping on encrypted communications. All tech companies have to do is keep targets from knowing their communications are no longer secure.

In a world of encrypted services, a potential solution could be to go back a few decades. It’s relatively easy for a service provider to silently add a law enforcement participant to a group chat or call. The service provider usually controls the identity system and so really decides who’s who and which devices are involved - they’re usually involved in introducing the parties to a chat or call. You end up with everything still being end-to-end encrypted, but there’s an extra ‘end’ on this particular communication. This sort of solution seems to be no more intrusive than the virtual crocodile clips that our democratically elected representatives and judiciary authorise today in traditional voice intercept solutions and certainly doesn’t give any government power they shouldn’t have.

We’re not talking about weakening encryption or defeating the end-to-end nature of the service. In a solution like this, we’re normally talking about suppressing a notification on a target’s device, and only on the device of the target and possibly those they communicate with. That’s a very different proposition to discuss and you don’t even have to touch the encryption.

Suppressing notifications might be less harmful than key escrow or backdoors. It wouldn't require a restructuring of the underlying platform or its encryption. If everything is in place -- warrants, probable cause, exhaustion of less intrusive methods -- it could give law enforcement a chance to play man-in-the-middle with targeted communications.

But there's a downside -- one that isn't referenced in the Lawfare post. If both ends of a conversation are targeted, this may be workable. But what if one of the participants isn't a target? This leaves them unprotected because the suppressed messages wouldn't inform other non-target parties the conversation isn't protected. Obviously it wouldn't do the let anyone targets converse with know things are no longer normal on the target's end, as it's likely one of those participants will let the target know they've encountered a security warning while talking to them.

In that respect, it is analogous to a wiretap on someone's phones. It will capture innocent conversations irrelevant to the investigation. In those cases, investigators are told to stop eavesdropping. It's unclear how the same practice will work when the communications are being harvested digitally via unseen government additions to private conversations.

This proposal seems at odds with the authors' suggested limitations, especially this one:

Any exceptional access solution should not fundamentally change the trust relationship between a service provider and its users.

When a service provider starts suppressing warning messages, the trust relationship is going to be fundamentally altered. Even if users are made aware this is only happening in rare instances involving targets of investigations, the fact that their platform provider has chosen to mute these messages means they really can't trust a lack of warnings to mean everything is still secure.

On the whole, it's a more restrained solution than others have proposed -- but it still has the built-in exploitation avenue key escrow does. It's better than a backdoor but not by much. And the authors of this proposal shouldn't pretend the solution lives up to the expectations they set for it. Their own proposal falls short of their listed ideals… and the whole thing is delivered under the false pretense law enforcement/intelligence agencies are subject to robust oversight.

Filed Under: backdoors, encryption, gchq, going dark, third parties, vulnerabilities

Canadian Court Affirms Citizens Still Have An Expectation Of Privacy In Devices Being Repaired By Third Parties

from the smallish-bulwark-against-tyranny dept

A Canadian appeals court has decided in favor of greater privacy protections for Canadians. The case involves the discovery of child porn by a computer technician who was repairing the appellant's computer. This info was handed over to the police who obtained a "general warrant" to image the hard drive to scour it for incriminating evidence.

Yes, "general warrants" are still a thing in the Crown provinces. The same thing we fought against with the institution of the Fourth Amendment exists in Canada. These days, it has more in common with All Writs orders than the general warrants of the pre-Revolution days, but there's still a hint of tyrannical intent to them. (Again, much like our All Writs orders, which date back to 1789.) "General warrants" are something the government uses when the law doesn't specifically grant permission for what it would like to do:

A provincial court judge, a judge of a superior court of criminal jurisdiction or a judge as defined in section 552 may issue a warrant in writing authorizing a peace officer to, subject to this section, use any device or investigative technique or procedure or do any thing described in the warrant that would, if not authorized, constitute an unreasonable search or seizure in respect of a person or a person’s property if

(a) the judge is satisfied by information on oath in writing that there are reasonable grounds to believe that an offence against this or any other Act of Parliament has been or will be committed and that information concerning the offence will be obtained through the use of the technique, procedure or device or the doing of the thing;

(b) the judge is satisfied that it is in the best interests of the administration of justice to issue the warrant; and

(c) there is no other provision in this or any other Act of Parliament that would provide for a warrant, authorization or order permitting the technique, procedure or device to be used or the thing to be done.

The appellant's challenge of the general warrant (rather than a more particular search warrant) almost went nowhere, but this decision grants him (and others like him) the standing to challenge the warrant in the first place. As the court notes, handing a computer over to a technician doesn't deprive the device's owner of an expectation of privacy.

In our view, the appellant had standing to argue a violation of his section 8 Charter right to be free from unreasonable search. The Crown concedes that the appellant maintained a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data stored on the computer even after delivery of his computer to the repair shop. Privacy is not an all-or-nothing concept. Allowing a technician to have physical access to the computer for the purpose of carrying out repairs does not amount to a waiver of the appellant’s strong expectation of privacy vis-à-vis third parties such as the police. While the appellant’s expectation of privacy was diminished to the extent that he could reasonably expect the repair technician to examine files on the computer in the course of the repairs, this operational reality does not deprive the appellant of standing to bring a claim under section 8 of the Charter.

Standing helps, but ultimately didn't help the appellant here. The court decides the failure to obtain the proper warrant is indeed a violation, but one not severe enough to trigger suppression of the evidence.

The failure to obtain an ordinary search warrant resulted in, at worst, a technical breach of the appellant’s section 8 Charter rights. There was prior judicial authorization for the search even though it was obtained pursuant to the wrong section of the Criminal Code. A general warrant requires reasonable and probable grounds to believe an offence has been committed, and reasonable and probable grounds to believe the search will reveal evidence of an offence – the same standard a judge would have applied with a traditional search warrant under section 487 of the Code.

The court goes on to note the failure to follow proper procedures when obtaining the warrant (ultimately the wrong sort of warrant) was negligent. It was anything but a "trivial" breach of protocol. Even if the officer's inexperience resulted in erroneous actions, the violation is severe enough for the court to take note of. But this negligence isn't enough to overcome the inevitable outcome of the search, in the court's opinion.

In this case, however, the causal link between the forensic search of the computer’s files and the violation of section 489.1 is very weak. Again, there is no reason to believe that the search of the computer’s files would have unfolded any differently if the officer who seized his computer had complied with section 489.1. On this record, any justice would have authorized the initial police detention of the computer, giving the police three months in which to seek a search warrant. There was no copying of the computer’s hard drive prior to the police obtaining a general warrant, which occurred within that three-month period. While the search of the computer’s files undoubtedly had a very significant impact on the appellant’s privacy interests, the police had sought and obtained judicial authorization prior to conducting the initial search, i.e., the forensic imaging. Although the effects of the breach were not trivial, we would not describe the impact on the appellant’s Charter-protected interest, as being particularly serious…

So, while this didn't end up giving the defendant the suppression he was seeking, it did at least affirm an expectation of privacy in devices being handled and repaired by third parties. Better, the opinion contains the government's concession that this privacy expectation exists. Hopefully, this will help deter violations -- erroneous or not -- in the future.

Filed Under: canada, general warrant, privacy, repairs, third parties

Whatever You Think Of The RIAA's Lawsuit Over Aurous, Shouldn't We Be Concerned That It's Pretending SOPA Is Law?

from the seems-like-an-issue-that-ought-to-be-looked-at dept

As you may have heard, earlier this week, the RIAA sued Aurous and its creator Andrew Sampson for creating an apparently easy to use software front-end for streaming music from some unauthorized repositories (mostly in Russia). For his part, Sampson insists that he just used some publicly available APIs and created a nice front end, without doing anything that is directly infringing himself. While I can understand those claims, the existing details and case law suggest that Sampson isn't going to fare very well in court. Given Sampson's own public statements, at the very least, the RIAA has made a fairly compelling case under the Grokster "inducement" theory. You can -- as I do -- think that "inducement" to copyright infringement is a ridiculous thing to be considered against the law, but that doesn't change the fact that it is, indeed, the law. Unless there are some as yet unknown details here, Sampson is likely going to have a hard time getting around the inducement claims.

So given all that, I fully expect that Sampson will lose the lawsuit (and lose easily) if the case gets that far. However, that doesn't mean that parts of the lawsuit aren't concerning. Of particular concern is what the RIAA is asking for in the lawsuit -- and what the judge appears to have granted. Specifically, in the lawsuit itself, the RIAA doesn't just ask for Aurous to be shut down, but also asks for all sorts of third parties to be restrained as well. Here's the list of things the RIAA asks the court to issue an order for:

(A) enjoining Defendants and all third parties with notice of the Order, including any Web hosts, domain name registrars, domain name registries, or their administrators, from facilitating access to any or all domain names, URLs, and websites (including, without limitation, www.aurous.me) through which Defendants infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights;

(B) requiring domain name registries and/or registrars holding or listing Defendants’ domain names and websites (including, without limitation, www.aurous.me) through which Defendants infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights to: (a) disable www.aurous.me and any related domain names specified by Plaintiffs through a registry hold or otherwise, and to make them inactive and non-transferable, and (b) transfer Defendants’ domain names to a registrar to be appointed by Plaintiffs to re-register the domain names in Plaintiffs’ names and under Plaintiffs’ ownership;

(C) enjoining all third parties with notice of the Order from maintaining, operating, or providing advertising, financial, technical, or other support to Defendants and any other domain names, URLs or websites through which Defendants infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights, including without limitation www.aurous.me; and

(D) enjoining all third-party distributors of applications, toolbars, or similar software with notice of the Order from distributing any applications, toolbars, or similar software applications that interoperate with any domain names, URLs or websites through which Defendants infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights, including without limitation www.aurous.me.

This is problematic, to say the least. Remember, SOPA did not become law, and yet the main part of the original SOPA bill was to create just this sort of remedy, whereby copyright providers could get a court order to get third party companies to be barred from doing any business at all with a site deemed a "pirate" site. Yet, SOPA did not become the law and the RIAA is just pretending it is law in asking the court to block all of those third parties from providing any services to the site.

The RIAA also submitted a desired temporary restraining order, which the judge effectively rubber stamped, granting everything the RIAA asked for -- but rejecting the RIAA's request not to have to put up a bond over this. Instead, the judge ordered the RIAA to put up a tiny $5,000 bond in case a party was "wrongfully" enjoined. That temporary restraining order seems pretty broad as well:

... Defendants and their officers, agents, servants, employees, attorneys, and all persons who in active concert or participation with each or any of them, or who are aiding and abetting their conduct, are hereby RESTRAINED and ENJOINED until further Order of this Court from infringing, or causing, enabling, facilitating, encouraging, promoting and inducing or participating in the infringement of, any of Plaintiffs’ copyrights protected by the Copyright Act, whether now in existence or hereafter created...

Of course, one might question what qualifies as "all persons who are in active concert or participation," but it still has the potential to be overbroad, and to pull in all sorts of third parties who are doing nothing more than providing basic services.

Again, none of this is to say that Aurous is legal or shouldn't be facing this lawsuit. But pulling in third parties here was exactly the kind of thing that Congress chose not to do when it did not pass SOPA, in the wake of overwhelming public sentiment against allowing these sorts of remedies.

So why is the RIAA simply acting like it got what it wanted with SOPA and asking the court to proceed accordingly?

Filed Under: andrew sampson, copyright, dmca, inducement, intermediary liability, lawsuit, restraining order, sopa, third parties
Companies: auroros, riaa

Fair Use At Risk When Private Companies Get To Make The Decision For Us

from the fair-use-in-the-age-of-the-cloud dept

We talk a lot about how fair use is under attack these days, and I've discussed in the past my concerns about freedom of expression when we always have a company (or a few companies) standing in the middle of our decisions on whether or not we can speak. NiemanLabs has a great example of where this becomes problematic in a story about how SoundCloud will not even consider fair use in making decisions about whether or not to take down content, and how that's harming journalism:

Here’s a wakeup call to audio creators everywhere: SoundCloud does not recognize your fair use rights under U.S. copyright law. If your content contains any copyrighted material to which you haven’t secured the rights — even if you have a valid fair use claim — SoundCloud may take it down at any time.

That’s exactly what happened to a former student of mine, and his experience should serve as a warning to the growing number of news organizations (including several that I work with) that use SoundCloud to host podcasts and other audio content.

Journalism as we know it could not exist without fair use, so it’s possible SoundCloud may not be a viable tool for the field. Imagine trying to do a story about the “Blurred Lines” lawsuit without playing copyrighted clips from the songs involved.

The article goes on to discuss an interesting journalism project that used a very brief clip of copyrighted music in a way that almost certainly was fair use. SoundCloud took it down. When pressed on this, the company eventually admitted that it refuses to take fair use into account, in part because fair use is only in the US:

We understand that US copyright law includes a doctrine of fair use. However, these rules are limited, difficult to apply outside of a court of law, and in any event do not necessarily apply outside of the United States. As SoundCloud is a global platform, we expect all of our creators to respect copyright law, and the rights of copyright owners, on a global basis.

As the writer of the article, Adam Ragusea, points out, this should be a major concern for any journalists using Soundcloud. And that includes us at Techdirt -- as we use SoundCloud to host our podcast. But the fact that the company might not even allow us to make use of our fair use rights -- the same rights that the Supreme Court has said are essential for protecting the First Amendment -- is a major concern, and one that has me thinking we should be looking for other platforms.

But, even then, we would most likely face the exact same situation. Any other platform will be under pressure from any sort of DMCA notice system as well. And while they could stand up for their users, many don't want to take on the liability risk. And thus, we run a serious risk of losing a key component of free expression.

And, honestly, the problem is only partially the companies like SoundCloud. The entire legal system is designed to make this sort of response the only real choice they have. With fair use being only truly available in a few countries, it's difficult to operate a global platform. This is why if we're going to put copyright into international trade agreements fair use needs to be included, otherwise we risk losing it back here in the US as well. But when you combine that situation with copyright law in which statutory damages are insane, and where the DMCA requires you to shoot first and ask questions later, it is way too easy for companies like SoundCloud to just throw up their hands and say this isn't worth dealing with.

Even companies that do try to take fair use into account -- like YouTube -- all too frequently fail to do a good job of considering fair use, leading to perfectly legitimate content disappearing, with no real recourse for the creators. This is why, beyond fair use, it seems like we need much stronger safe harbors for intermediaries like SoundCloud. It works with Section 230 of the CDA, in which the rule is pretty ironclad: the service provider should never be seen as legally liable for the content its users create. For fair use to thrive, copyright law requires a similarly ironclad safe harbor. This doesn't -- as some will inevitably claim -- mean that there is no recourse over infringement. There absolutely is. The copyright holder still has every right to target the actual end user, and that person can then stand up for their own fair use rights, which is only proper.

But under the current system, end users don't even have the chance to stand up for their own fair use/free speech rights, because third-party platforms like SoundCloud get to make the final decision for them -- and with all of the liability incentives stacked against them, free speech doesn't have a chance.

Filed Under: copyright, fair use, freedom of expression, journalism, private companies, safe harbors, third parties
Companies: soundcloud, youtube

'Trusted Third Parties' Add One More Link In The Supply Chain Between Your Data And Government Requests

from the a-new-wave-of-data-brokers dept

Just how many entities have their hands on your data when the NSA makes requests? Well, it's not just the service providers and any number of analysts at the NSA. There's a whole industry subset of third parties that actually handle requests, implement wiretaps, direct searches for communications/data and deliver this information to the intelligence agency.

ZDNet's Zack Whittaker has the details.

With permission from their ISP customers, these third-parties discreetly wiretap their networks at the behest of law enforcement agencies, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and even intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA).

By implementing these government data requests with precision and accuracy, trusted third-parties — like Neustar, Subsentio, and Yaana — can turn reasonable profits for their services.

Little is known about these types of companies, which act as outsourced data brokers between small and major U.S. ISPs and phone companies, and the federal government. Under the 1994 law, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), any company considered a "communications provider" has to allow government agencies access when a valid court order is served. No matter how big or small, even companies whose legal and financial resources are limited do not escape federal wiretapping laws.

Subpoenas, search warrants, court orders -- even those from the FISA court -- run through these trusted third parties. From the information Whittaker has gathered, this market seems to have evolved out of limited legal resources retained by smaller ISPs and service providers. Incoming requests are forwarded to these companies, which vet them for legal issues and determine what exactly needs to be done to satisfy them. Some of this is just CYA -- an extra insulating layer to serve as a buffer between the service provider and the possibly aggrieved customer(s). Some of it is due to practicality. Smaller ISPs and service providers do not retain lawyers with the security clearance needed to inspect/challenge certain orders.

One of those attorneys, who declined to be named for the story because the person holds top-secret security clearance, explained that although hundreds of lawyers have the same clearance — including those serving terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay — very few have been in front of the FISA Court to defend their clients. These clearance-holding lawyers have been in high demand over the past year representing major Silicon Valley companies implicated in the NSA's surveillance programs.

For the majority of smaller companies (as well as larger ones, who have refused to comment on challenging such warrants), complying with data demands may be their only option. The vast majority, however, do not have the resources to handle such requests.

"If they don't have an internal lawyer [reviewing FISA warrants], they could use a third-party service. That third-party can't provide legal advice, but it can create a system for reviewing the data, pulling, and processing the data," the security clearance-holding attorney said.

Because these companies have the sort of clearance the ISPs lack, smaller ISPs are often nothing more than dumb terminals for government agencies to manipulate. The trusted third parties are often the only entities that see certain court orders and requests, and ISP participation in the approval and response processes is often non-existent. In many cases, the ISP cannot even see the court order it's being directed to comply with.

"Of what worth is our permission when we don't even know what we're being asked to give access to?" a senior staffer at [ISP] Cbeyond admitted.

In the unlikely event that a request is rejected, it's usually done by the third parties, again without the participation of the ISP itself. The trusted third parties are better equipped -- in terms of legal team security clearance -- to do this than smaller ISPs are, but that additional expertise is of little use should ISPs decide to directly challenge a court order.

If the ISP or phone company decides to fight a warrant, the third-party can stand back and wash its hands of it.

Burr said Neustar "has and will" reject subpoenas that are inadequate for one reason or another. But should its clients choose to fight a FISA warrant or court order it believes to be overbroad, Neustar will not join the battle in court.

Other trusted third-parties take a similar approach.

"We're out of the picture," said Marcus Thomas, chief technology officer at Subsentio, another trusted third-party company, founded in 2004, and based out of Littleton, Colorado.

While the third parties may be collecting money from ISPs for handling data and intercept requests, their desire to stay in the government's good graces appears to outweigh any loyalty to the businesses that retain their services.

"It's the provider's problem," [Yaana Executive VP Tony] Rutkowski said. "The nice part about the trusted third-party business is that just from a liability standpoint, we don't want to be left holding the bag here." [Yaana CTO David] Grootwassink agreed. "We provide the gears. We don't get involved in fights between the governments and our clients."

And therein lies part of the problem. While it may be easier to turn over what is largely a compliance function to third parties, there's very little oversight into these companies' actions and processes. Even the ISPs that hire them seem to have limited insight into what's actually being done. These go-betweens have carefully dodged liability by refusing to be involved in legal challenges, leaving underequipped ISPs to fight their own battles. While some trusted third parties have issued transparency reports detailing the requests they've facilitated, this basically leaves the public to perform the oversight, something of very limited use. About all the public can do is switch providers, which, if even an option, only puts them in the hands of another company using the same practices.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, data, isps, phones, records, surveillance, third parties

Texas Appeals Court Vacates Order Commanding Google To Hunt Down Third Party Content And Destroy It

from the violating-both-due-process-and-the-realm-of-possibility dept

Back in April, a Texas district court judge (well, a "visiting judge") ordered Google to do the following:

The gag order, signed by visiting San Antonio Judge Richard Price in February 2013, forces Google and other search engines to wipe out all record of the allegations from the Internet. It also compels the search engine to find third parties who posted the information to get it back and destroy it.

This was to be done on behalf of Calvin C. Jackson, an attorney who was accused of forging signatures on court records. It's unknown whether the judge actually read what he was signing or if he did, whether he recognized how completely ridiculous the request was. Google may index the web and hold a commanding lead in the search engine market, but it certainly doesn't have the ability to demand third parties turn over and/or destroy content.

That the whole thing took place under seal and out of the public eye made it even more ridiculous. The court order demanding the impossible was also placed under seal, presumably to protect Jackson from being further linked to the allegations he was trying to bury. We can all see how well that worked out.

Now, a Texas appeals court has released Google from having to do things it's not capable of. The court decision isn't predicated on Google's inability to carry out Jackson's demands. Instead, it hinges on the fact that Google should never have been part of the whole debacle.

The order identified Google as an entity to whom the order must be sent. The order further required all identified recipients to expunge or destroy all records relating to the action other than certain, specifically identified records….

Constitutional due process requires a party to be served with process and to receive notice of an action to which it is an interested party. A judgment rendered in violation of due process is void…

It is clear from the record that Google was never named as a party to the suit, was never served with process, never waived or accepted process, and never made an appearance in the suit before the expunction order was entered. Nothing in the record establishes that Google stands in privity to the commission or to Jackson. Accordingly, we hold that Google was not a party to the suit and that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to enter orders against Google.

As Eugene Volokh notes, this seems obvious enough. But it wasn't obvious to the lower court which ordered Google to go door-to-door around the internet with a paper shredder in tow.

Beyond the normal First Amendment ramifications, there's also the fact that Jackson was effectively asking the court (and Google by extension) to destroy public records. The allegations against Jackson weren't simply blog posts or newspaper articles. These allegations were part of a lawsuit brought against the attorney (the same lawsuit that didn't include Google). Public records can be expunged, but that's limited to what the court itself directly controls. Anything already posted to the internet is out of its reach. Calvin Jackson's quest for an allegation-free existence is futile, and every additional legal effort seems to place it just that much further out of reach.

Filed Under: calvin c. jackson, calvin jackson, richard price, right to be forgotten, texas, third parties
Companies: google

Court Says Cisco Has No Right To Sue To Invalidate A Patent That Is Being Used Against Its Customers

from the that-just-seems-wrong dept

Yet another unfortunate patent decision has come out of the appeals court for the federal circuit. This involves a case where certain customers of Cisco products were being sued for patent infringement by TR Labs, and part of its argument was that certain Cisco equipment resulted in the infringement by those customers. In response, Cisco filed a lawsuit in federal court, asking for a declaratory judgment that TR Labs' patents were invalid. TR Labs hit back that it had not sued Cisco, had no intention of suing Cisco, and thus Cisco could not sue for declaratory judgment. Unfortunately, the lower courts and now the appeals court have agreed that Cisco has no basis to bring a lawsuit, because there is no direct threat against it.

There are reasons why it makes sense to require an actual potential dispute before allowing someone to bring a declaratory judgment action, but it seems silly to argue that Cisco can't file this lawsuit. After all, its business can clearly be impacted by TR Labs' lawsuits. First, it automatically makes Cisco's offerings more expensive, in that buyers may either face increased liability or direct licensing costs just to use those products. Thus, Cisco has a direct financial stake in the outcome of those lawsuits and has a very good reason to see the patents invalidated. Unfortunately, the court just doesn't think that's enough:

In the circumstances presented here, that interest is simply insufficient to give rise to a current, justiciable case or controversy upon which federal declaratory judgment jurisdiction may be predicated

Of course, a better solution all around would be to make it much easier for anyone to get bad patents thrown out, but that's just not how our patent system works, unfortunately.

Filed Under: patents, routers, third parties
Companies: cisco, tr labs

Patent Office Releases Rules To Let Third Parties Provide Documents To Help Reject Patent Applications

from the could-be-useful dept

One of the big problems with the patent system is that it's not an adversarial process at all. You only have advocates for why a patent should be granted. No one is on the other side arguing why it shouldn't be. The examiner is supposed to be neutral, but actually has some implicit incentives to find things more patentable than not. For example, patent examiners are often reviewed on their productivity in getting through patent applications. Considering the backlog of patents, this isn't a surprise. But since there's no such thing as a true "final rejection" of a patent, the inventor and their lawyers can keep coming back, asking the patent office to try again. But each time the examiner has to go back and review the same application all over again, that's time away from a new application, and thus hurts his or her "productivity."

Making matters worse, once a patent is granted, it has to be presumed valid under the law. Meaning that even though it has never actually been tested in an adversarial process, the courts simply assume it's a valid patent. The fact that when patents do get re-examined, somewhere around three quarters of them have to be adjusted, with previously approved claims rejected, certainly calls into question just how "valid" those patents are. One of the small changes in the patent reform bill that past last year, the America Invents Act (AIA), was that it will now be slightly easier to file documents with the Patent Office for a patent application under consideration, rather than waiting until after the patent is granted.

This is definitely a step in the right direction, though, I do wonder how widely it will be used. Part of the problem is that it's often not at all possible to tell what a patent actually impacts until after its granted and the holder sues or threatens to sue. And no one can watch every application to see if they might have some useful prior art or evidence of obviousness. Either way, the rules for such third party submissions go into effect September 16th, and the USPTO is releasing its official rules for how the process will work (pdf and embedded below). There is a fee involved -- $180 -- but it's exempted for your first submission on a particular patent application if that submission is less than three documents. That may be a bit limiting, but it does suggest that individuals with clear prior art or proof of obviousness might at least be able to weigh in a bit to convince the examiner that an application is totally bogus.

Filed Under: obviousness, patents, prior art, third parties, uspto

Rapidshare Declared Legal (Again) In Germany, But With A Bizarre Requirement To Monitor Other Sites

from the how-does-that-make-sense dept

A few weeks back, there were reports floating around claiming that a high regional court in Germany had ruled against Rapidshare, which some thought went against earlier rulings that had found the company's model legal in both Europe and the US. Considering that Rapidshare is quite frequently compared to Megaupload (despite some significant differences), these cases are pretty important. When I saw that announcement a couple weeks ago, I also heard from some people in Germany who said to wait until the full ruling was out before assuming that the news making the rounds -- which was being pushed by the entertainment industry -- was accurate. Indeed, now that the details have come out, the ruling is much more mixed, and is mostly a victory for Rapidshare. It effectively says that Rapidshare's business is legal -- and this comes from a German court that has a history of suggesting that service providers need to be copyright cops.

In this case, that is the one questionable part of the ruling. While the court does not say that Rapidshare needs to police uploads, it does say that the company needs to police external links to the site and then disable the files if they are obviously infringing. This doesn't make much sense if you think about it. It seems odd that Rapidshare should be forced to monitor what third party users on fourth party sites are doing, and then take action based on that. But, it appears the company may appeal that part. And, for the time being, a ruling that acting as a hosting provider/cyberlocker is legal is an important and useful ruling, in a court not known for handling copyright cases very well.

Filed Under: copyright, cyberlockers, germany, monitoring, third parties
Companies: rapidshare