Trump Transition Website Has Some Copyright Problems -- Both In Copying Content & In Claiming Copyright

from the make-plagiarism-great-again dept

By now, lots of people within the Donald Trump campaign have admitted that even they didn't really expect to win -- and thus they're scrambling to get things in order to actually, you know, run the damn country. That includes the transition website, GreatAgain.gov, which (to their credit) the Trump team did get up pretty quickly. Of course, some of the reason they were able to do that was, apparently, that they just copied a whole bunch of text from another website, Partnership for Public Service's Center for Presidential Transition. Now, that site is pretty good, and it's certainly topical, seeing as the whole project is designed to do exactly this: help Presidents transition power. But that doesn't mean that a campaign is just supposed to copy the website wholesale.

And, yet, the Trump campaign did exactly that. If the Center were so inclined, it could argue that this is pretty blatant copyright infringement (its website says that the content is covered by copyright, and it doesn't seem to use an open license like Creative Commons, even though it probably should). There is, at least, a strong argument of fair use here, given the nature of what's being done here -- but it's not exactly a slam dunk. Of course, it also leads to some oddities, because, in the rush to copy, the Trump campaign seems to have left in references to the Center itself or charts that weren't copied as well:

One post, titled "Help Wanted: 4,000 Presidential Appointments," refers to a "chart below" — but the version on Trump's site has no chart. On the center's website, those lines are followed by a detailed interactive graphic showing the positions requiring Senate confirmation in the departments of Justice and State.

Another page on Trump's site, titled "The Offices and Agencies Supporting the Transition," is exactly the same as a page on the nonprofit's site — including a reference to "our own Center library." Both versions link to the nonprofit's online resource.

On the nonprofit group's site, the two posts are accompanied by the name of the Partnership for Public Service staffer who wrote them. There is no such attribution on the Trump site.

But that's not the only copyright problem here. There's also the fact that GreatAgain.gov has its own copyright notice, in which it is using a Creative Commons license -- and specifically the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, which is pretty permissive. But, of course, it can't actually claim copyright on the Center's material that it just up and copied.

And then there's the separate question of can the Trump transition team actually claim any copyright at all? After all, as we've discussed many times, works of the federal government are not subject to copyright protection. But... is the transition site a work of the federal government? That seems like a pretty big gray area, though there's a strong argument that it's not. Yes, the website is hosted on .gov, and everyone knows these people will be the federal government in a few months, they're not technically part of the federal government yet. And given that copyright law already allows the federal government to hold the copyright on works created by outside parties and then assigned to the federal government, it seems most likely that the transition team would be seen as outside the federal government for now.

Of course, it's unlikely that any of this will matter. The Center for Presidential Transition doesn't seem that concerned about the copying, and one hopes that there aren't going to be any issues concerning the copyright status of the transition website, but since there has basically been zero discussion at all about the new administration's position on copyright, watching how it handles these kinds of situations is important.

Filed Under: copyright, donald trump, plagiarism, public domain, transition

Ted Cruz Still Blatantly Misrepresenting Internet Governance Transition

from the let-it-go,-ted dept

Just a few months ago, we wrote up a decently long post explaining why the upcoming "transition" of a piece of internet governance away from the US government was both a good thing and not a big deal. You can read those two posts on it, but the really short version is twofold: (1) the Commerce Department's "control" over ICANN's IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) was always pretty much non-existent in the first place; and (2) even having that little connection to the US government, though, only provided tremendous fodder for foreign governments (mainly: Russia & China) to push to take control of the internet themselves. That's what that whole disastrous UN/ITU/WCIT mess was a few years back. Relinquishing the (non-existent) control, with clear parameters that internet governance wouldn't then be allowed to jump into the ITU's lap, helps on basically every point. It takes away a key reason that other countries have used to claim they need more control, and it makes it clear that internet governance needs to remain out of any particular government's control.

As we noted, this is all a good thing.

But for unclear reasons, Senator Ted Cruz keeps insisting that this "transfer" is about the US giving control over the internet to the UN. He's ramped up this rhetoric lately as the transition gets closer:

"Today our country faces a threat to the internet as we know it. In 22 short days, if Congress fails to act, the Obama administration intends to give away the internet to an international body akin to the United Nations," Cruz said in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday. "I rise today to discuss the significant, irreparable damage this proposed internet giveaway could wreak not only on our nation but on free speech across the world."

Except that's hogwash. The plan does exactly the opposite. We've made this point over and over again, and thankfully others are doing so as well. Fusion has a long and detailed article that highlights that Cruz's claims are a fantasy and have no basis in reality. It goes through the whole history of IANA (if you don't know the story of Jon Postel and Joyce Reynolds, and how the two of them basically kept the internet running in their spare time for a few decades, you should...), but then points out that Cruz is just wrong:

To be clear: ICANN has about as much control over the internet as Ted Cruz has a grasp on how DNS actually works–which is to say, very little. But the perpetuation of the fiction that ICANN controls the internet is representative of the completely understandable human impulse to try and assign control of the internet to someone or something, particularly in a time where the systems that shape most users’ experience of the internet are increasingly opaque and unaccountable to users.

Saying any one group controls the internet is as absurd as saying who “controls” capitalism or globalization itself. But everyone has their version of control. Silicon Valley billionaires may insist we surrender to the invisible hand of the network, which simply chooses disruption and convenience over accountability and ethics. For the federal government, it’s far easier to accuse the private sector of being in control and thwarting national security than admit that mass surveillance is an expensive and incompetent tactic. For critics (or those who’d prefer that control be in their hands), it would be far simpler to point at a single oligarch or Bohemian Club or ICANN that needs to be overthrown; it might redeem what today at times seems like a fractal trainwreck of an internet, and somehow bring us back to John Perry Barlow’s never-realized promise of an independent cyberspace.

And it also points out that the biggest "threat" to how internet governance is handled is if Cruz actually succeeds in blocking the transition:

Mostly, when I asked people at ICANN about worst-case scenarios with the transition, they pointed to Ted Cruz’s efforts. The transition not going through–either through a blocking action from this current Congress through some legislative action or Congress just delaying until the next president comes into office–would not only undermine the work that a lot of people have already put into the transition plan, it also would create even further mistrust and frustration among countries like Brazil that continue to be frustrated by US control. Maybe that would be enough to justify a fragmentation of the root zone. Or it could just make it harder for the multistakeholder model to function by undermining trust in the community as a whole, making consensus harder to achieve. Which is kind of to say it could start to look a lot more like the US Congress.

In other words, as we've explained before, Ted Cruz's concerns over the internet here are completely backwards. Up is down, black is white, night is day kind of stuff. Keeping the IANA connection to the US government is the kind of thing that opens up the possibility for Russia/China to exert more control over internet governance by routing around ICANN and its flawed, but better than the alternative, "multistakeholder" setup. Moving ICANN away from the US government, with strict rules in place that basically keep it operating as is, takes away one of the key arguments that foreign countries have been using to try to seize control over key governance aspects of the internet.

If Cruz fears foreign governments taking control of internet governance, he should do the exact opposite of what he's doing now. Let the Commerce Dept. sever the almost entirely imaginary leash it has on ICANN. Otherwise, other countries' frustration with the US's roles is a much bigger actual threat to how the internet is managed.

Filed Under: commerce dept., iana, internet, internet governance, ted cruz, transition, un, wcit
Companies: icann

Yes, Getting The US Government Out Of 'Managing' Internet Domain Governance Is A Good Thing

from the moving-on dept

A little over two years ago, when the Commerce Department officially announced plans to "relinquish control" over ICANN's IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) we tried to explain why people should stop freaking out. There were a bunch of people up in arms, claiming that the US government was "giving away the internet." That was, and still is, complete hogwash. There are two important things to understand in this. First, the Commerce Department's "oversight" over ICANN and IANA is already basically non-existent. It was always more on paper than in reality, as the Commerce Department, rightly, took a totally hands off approach. Second, there has been a big effort by foreign governments, mainly Russia and China, to take control over the internet, and strip it from ICANN, and putting it in the ITU, a confusing mess of an organization that's a part of the UN, but heavily controlled by governments without input from actual technologists or public interest groups.

A key part of the Commerce Department's "transition" plan was that it would basically erase the almost entirely imaginary link between IANA and the Commerce Department, but only if a plan was created that kept IANA independent and not as a part of the UN or any organization that would lead to mostly government control, as opposed to what everyone (unfortunately) likes to call a "multistakeholder process" (which just means not just government in the room). And with that plan in place, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) has now come out in support of this plan.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced today that the proposal developed by the global Internet multistakeholder community meets the criteria NTIA outlined in March 2014 when it stated its intent to transition the U.S. Government’s stewardship role for the Internet domain name system (DNS) technical functions, known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions.

The announcement marks an important milestone in the U.S. Government’s effort to complete the transition of the Internet’s domain name system and ensure that the Internet remains a platform for innovation, economic growth, and free speech.

For the last 18 years, the United States has worked with businesses, technical experts, governments, and civil society groups to establish a multistakeholder, private-sector led system for the global coordination of the DNS. To accomplish this goal, in 1998, NTIA partnered with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based nonprofit, to transition technical DNS coordination and management functions to the private sector. In 2014, NTIA initiated the final step in the privatization process by asking ICANN to convene global stakeholders to develop a plan to complete the transition away from NTIA’s remaining legacy role.

Now, you would think that "small government" types would be happy about the US government completing its "privatization" of internet governance. But, that's because many "small government" types are only small government types when it suits them. Senate Ted Cruz and Rep. Sean Duffy have rushed out a bill, called the "Protecting Internet Freedom Act" that would block the Commerce Department from completing the privatization of the internet. This is both silly and counterproductive.

The Commerce Department's flimsy and never really used "control" over NTIA is basically meaningless yet it's frequently used by foreign governments and the ITU/UN as a reason for taking complete control over the IANA process. And that's only ramped up in recent years due to concerns about the NSA and surveillance. In other words, the US having any official control over internet governance is actually helping authoritarian governments by making the argument that US "control" over the internet is only helping the NSA. By separating IANA from the US government, but keeping the overall process as one that is not controlled by any government, you actually have a better chance of keeping the internet functioning in an open manner. Leaving it under the US government control, no matter how flimsy that link really is, only gives foreign governments useful fodder for a more complete move to take over control themselves.

Eli Dourado, who has spent a ton of time digging into and being involved in internet governance issues, has a great and detailed post about why this transition is a good thing and should be supported. It has all of the relevant history here (including my favorite point about how prior to ICANN, the IANA functions were controlled one dude, Jon Postel, who more or less declared himself the czar over how the domain name system was managed). But he also gets directly to the point: Congress forcing the US government to keep this "control" over IANA would do much more harm than good:

In truth, authoritarian regimes would love nothing more than to see the IANA transition fail. It would give them another shot at taking the issue to the ITU, this time with the added ammunition of pointing out that the United States does not keep its word regarding Internet governance. Oddly, this places Cruz and Duffy on the same side as Russia and China, against the world’s democracies, the Obama administration, sober Republicans, virtually every US tech company, the Internet Society, and virtually every freedom-loving intellectual or activist I have met who has participated on a US delegation to the ITU.

Separately, he also points out that for all the hype over this, the IANA function is actually not nearly as important as some make it out to be. The US government losing whatever sense of "control" it had over it is unlikely to have a huge impact on the internet itself. So the "costs" to this transition are basically nil. The cost to keeping the paper control in place, however, may be very large, in that it provides tremendous ammunition to foreign authoritarian regimes to push for much more extreme changes to internet governance that would be much, much worse.

Filed Under: commerce department, iana, icann, internet governance, itu, ntia, privatization, sean duffy, ted cruz, transition, un, wcit
Companies: icann

Flying Car, Already Cleared For Skies, Now Cleared For Roads Too

from the but-where's-my-flying-car dept

Ah, the cry of we-want-the-future-now folks has been "where's my flying car?" Well, a very simple version of one may finally be coming to market. A year ago, we noted that the Terrafugia Transition "roadable aircraft" had been approved by the FAA for flight as a light sports aircraft (meaning you don't even need a full pilots license). But it apparently took another year for the Transition to get the necessary "exemptions" from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to let the thing go on the road. In case you're wondering why it needed exemptions, the LA Times has the details:

So what kinds of special exemptions does a "roadable aircraft" (best name ever) need? Well, special windows, for one. Regular laminated automotive safety glass is too heavy for the Transition while in the air, and there's always a danger that a bird could fracture it. (Dang birds!) Instead of glass windows, the Transition will use a polycarbonate material less prone to shattering. NHTSA also signed off on the use of special tires.

Now, of course, this isn't really the Jetsons-like vision of the flying car people have talked about for ages. The reason it's called a "roadable aircraft" rather than a "flying car" is that the emphasis here is definitely on the aircraft part, and you still have to take off and land at an airport. It's just that you can drive to and from the airport in the same vehicle. And it'll only set you back $250,000 (about $50,000 more than what was reported last year). By the time it actually hits the market next year, perhaps it'll cost even more.

Filed Under: flying cars, roadable aircraft, transition
Companies: faa, nhtsa, terrafugia

FAA Gives Approval To Flying Car?

from the there's-my-flying-car! dept

The joking lamentation of those who were promised, back during the 20th century, of a magical Jetsons-like future in the 21st century, is the famous "but, where's my flying car?" Apparently, it's on the way. Sort of. The FAA is apparently about to give approval to the Transition, which its maker, Terrafugia, refers to as a "roadable aircraft" (catchy!) rather than a flying car. It's basically a car that has foldout wings, which can then be used to take off and land at airports. Not quite the Jetsons flying car of the future, but it's progress, right? We had noted that there were still a bunch of companies working on flying cars, even as some of the more well known attempts have remained permanently grounded. And, of course, as people will be quick to point out in the comments (I'm sure), the idea of flying cars scares the hell out of some people, since they expect it to mean a lot more air crashes and resulting deaths. Those folks might not be thrilled to note that since this is classified as a light sports aircraft, rather than a full airplane, it doesn't require a full pilot's license -- but instead just needs 20 logged hours of flight.

There are some cool things about the Transition, such as the fact that it uses standard unleaded car fuel, rather than airplane fuel, and the fact that it's designed to fit in a garage when the wings are folded up. But, at $200,000, with rather limited range and cargo holding ability, I wouldn't worry too much about these things becoming particularly common any time soon.

Filed Under: flying cars, roadable aircraft, transition
Companies: faa, terrafugia

US Switches To Digital TV And The World Doesn't End -- Nor Does Hollywood

from the phew dept

We were quite surprised to find no further calls for delays on the switchover to digital over the air TV from analog -- but we're not at all surprised to find out that the actual switchover happened with relatively few problems. Sure there are some people who are confused or who are having difficulty getting their new converter boxes working properly, but there's been no catastrophic failure or problems, and most of the issues seem to have been resolved pretty quickly. Perhaps the gov't really did need a few extra months, but my guess is that the same thing likely would have happened back in February... or if we had done the switchover years ago. So, now can we put the old spectrum to good use, finally?

Separately, the EFF is noting that (once again) it appears that Hollywood lied and exaggerated its claim that it needed a broadcast flag that would stop DVR copying of digital TV or it would start pulling content off the air. Funny thing... that didn't happen. As the EFF notes:

Entertainment industries like to argue that they "need" DRM to make works available. And policymakers have eagerly adopted this argument. But when the bluff is called, it turns out that the DRM wasn't so necessary after all.

So will our politicians recognize this? Or will they continue to believe Hollywood, everytime it insists it needs some new kind of DRM with legal backing from the gov't?

Filed Under: broadcast flag, digital tv, drm, hollywood, politics, transition

A Few Million Homes Still Aren't Ready For Digital TV Transition... But Don't Let That Stop It

from the bring-it-on dept

The transition to digital TV, and the shutdown of analog broadcasts, is set to finally go ahead on June 12, after a four-month delay was put into place by Congress. The delay capped off a process that's been pretty bungled from the outset, though things seem to have mostly come together over the last couple of months. Still, though, stories emerge about the 3 million or so homes that aren't ready for the transition, despite the time and money that's been spent on informational campaigns about it. It's been a pleasant surprise to see these stories largely unaccompanied by calls for further delays. The number of unprepared homes has fallen by half since the delay was announced in February, and a good way to get most of the rest (assuming they actually care) to follow would seem to be to go ahead and flip the switch. At this point, if people haven't caught on, perhaps it's the only way to get them to do so. And just in case any Techdirt readers are in that 2.8 million, hit dtv.gov or call 1-888-CALL-FCC to get info and/or help.

Filed Under: digital tv, politics, transition

FCC May Need To Staff Up The Phone Lines To Deal With Digitial TV Transition

from the full-employment-act? dept

There has been plenty of concern over the past year, that the FCC isn't really prepared for the shift from analog tv signals to digital tv signals that will happen early next year. While the recent switchover test in Wilmington, N.C. didn't go that badly, the LA Times notes that the FCC still received calls from 797 residents in the city on the first day and 424 more on the second day. While the FCC points out that this is less than one-half of one percent of the 180,000 TV-viewing households the changeover impacted, this still should throw up some warning signs for the big switchover.

First of all, in the test region, the FCC did a much bigger education campaign than has been done nationwide. On top of that, the percentage of households in Wilmington impacted by the change (those who don't use cable or satellite TV) was only 8%, compared to 12% in the rest of the country. Some quick and dirty math suggests this could mean somewhere just under a million calls to the FCC for the big changeover. While the FCC staffed up to take the calls, you'd have to imagine they'll have to staff up a lot more to take a million calls over the course of a couple days. Perhaps they can hire all those telemarketers who the telemarketing industry insisted would be put out of work by the "Do Not Call" list...

Filed Under: analog tv, digital tv, phone support, transition
Companies: fcc