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Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates
Tinman57:
Congress custard.
CISPA's second serving is even worse than the first
-IainB (March 25, 2013, 08:44 PM)
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Geeze, 600 government offices that will have access to your private information. And you know that all this data will be accessed without cause or justification.
IainB:
demandprogress.org asks for action to block CFAA, in a circular email:
We need to beat back a bad proposal to expand the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) -- in a hurry. So we're asking Demand Progress members and the broader Internet Defense League to snap into action next week, especially Monday and Tuesday (April 8th and 9th.)
1) You can read more and grab code for our embeddable contact-Congress widgets by clicking here: www.FixTheCFAA.com
We'd ask you to post them to your site to help let your visitors know about this threat, and to spur them to get involved. You'll be joining Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, EFF, Boing Boing, Reddit, and other great groups and sites as we stand together against this awful proposal.
2) You can use these links to ask your friends to take part:
[fb] If you're already on Facebook, click here to share with your friends.
[fb] If you're already on Twitter, click here to tweet about the campaign: Tweet
As many of you probably know, our friend (and friend to many of you) Aaron Swartz committed suicide earlier this year, while he was being prosecuted for downloading too many academic articles from the JSTOR cataloguing site. Prosecutors were hanging four decades in prison over his head!
Aaron was charged under the CFAA, a law that passed in the mid-80s, before more than a handful of Americans even had personal computers -- let alone Internet access.
Yet law enforcement interprets this statute so broadly that it claims it criminalizes all sorts of mundane Internet use: potentially even breaking a website's fine print terms of service agreement. Don't set up a Myspace page for your cat. Don't fudge your height on a dating site. Don't share your Facebook password with anybody, ever. You could be exposed to prosecution for a federal crime.
We've been pushing to change this, and have made some progress: Reps and Senators are pulling together a proposal called "Aaron's Law".
But... then last week members of the House Judiciary Committee floated an audacious proposal that would actually expand and harshen certain parts of the CFAA. Think of it as the opposite of Aaron's Law. And we're hearing that it could come up for a vote as soon as next week.
We need your helping mobilizing your visitors as we strive to beat back this awful proposal and to build momentum for Aaron's Law.
1) You can read more and grab code for our embeddable contact-Congress widgets by clicking here: www.FixTheCFAA.com
We'd ask you to post them to your site to help let your visitors know about this threat, and to spur them to get involved. You'll be joining Fight for the Future, Demand Progress, EFF, Boing Boing, Reddit, and other great groups and sites as we stand together against this awful proposal.
2) You can use these links to ask your friends to take part:
[fb] If you're already on Facebook, click here to share with your friends.
[fb] If you're already on Twitter, click here to tweet about the campaign: Tweet
Reforming the CFAA is a real chance for the US Congress to make laws governing the Internet better and fairer. And it's a chance for the coalition that came together around SOPA to actually pass positive reform. If all of us take action next week, it won't just kill a bad bill, it will help us build real momentum to passing positive change in the wake of Aaron's death.
Thanks,
Demand Progress
Paid for by Demand Progress (DemandProgress.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Contributions are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.
One last thing -- Demand Progress's small, dedicated, under-paid staff relies on the generosity of members like you to support our work. Will you click here to chip in $5 or $10? Or you can become a Demand Progress monthly sustainer by clicking here. Thank you!
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Tinman57:
demandprogress.org asks for action to block CFAA, in a circular email:
Already posted here: https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=34560.0
-IainB (April 06, 2013, 02:10 AM)
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IainB:
Why wait for the enactment of Bills from Congress, when you can trust the players with vested interests to "self-regulate"?
YouTube’s Deal With Universal Blocks DMCA Counter Notices
Hmm. Methinks this might rather be bypassing the interests and objections of the Internet citizens and users.
"Do no evil."
Yeah, right.
IainB:
Another example of **AA prescriptive/censorship activity on the Internet being challenged:
IsoHunt Wants Jury to Rule on Free Speech Issues in MPAA Case
April 6, 2013
Last month BitTorrent site isoHunt lost its appeal against the MPAA, meaning that the site has to continue filtering movie and TV related terms from its search engine. However, isoHunt founder Gary Fung is not giving up just yet and has asked for a jury to decide on the case. In a petition filed this week isoHunt argues that, among other things, the Ninth Circuit decision chills innovation and threatens free speech online.
mpaa isohuntFor more than seven years isoHunt and the MPAA have been battling in court, and it’s not over yet.
In 2010 the District Court ordered the owner of isoHunt to start censoring the site’s search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the US.
IsoHunt hoped to overturn this ruling in an appeal, but last month the Ninth Circuit upheld the decision of the lower court, ruling that the website does not qualify for safe harbor protection under the DMCA.
For now this means that the keyword filter stays in place, but for isoHunt founder Gary Fung this is not the end of the matter. This week isoHunt’s legal team petitioned the court for a re-hearing before a jury.
Among other things, isoHunt argues that the current verdict chills innovation and threatens free speech on the Internet.
“Fung contends that many of the items of evidence cited by the District Court should be protected as Free Speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution and would be inadmissible at trial. As a result of decisions herein, impermissible burdens are being imposed on Fung’s speech and on the speech of other Internet users,” the petition reads.
The MPAA used quotes from isoHunt’s founder dating back to 2003, to argue that he was aware of and liable for copyright infringing use of the site. As evidence the MPAA cited the following statements made by Fung in a forum thread discussing the RIAA.
“Agreed. they accuse us for thieves, and they r right. Only we r ‘stealing’ from the leechers (them!) and not the originators (artists),” Fung wrote.
IsoHunt’s founder later updated the IRC announce bot to say: “Files… are now being indexed for isoHunt.com…We completely OPPOSE RIAA & Co., so do not be alarmed by our indexing activities.”
In its petition for a re-hearing isoHunt argues that when these isolated statements are used to determine liability, without any connection to direct infringements, this could “severely chill free speech” and threaten innovation.
“The effect of decisions herein is to make sarcasm directed at copyright enforcement or statements in support of file-sharing a reason for later imposition of liability. Cautious individuals will practice self-censorship. Outspoken individuals will avoid certain areas of technological development,” isoHunt’s legal team writes.
The free speech concerns are not the only issue raised by isoHunt. The petition also contends that there is no evidence that isohunt’s founder promoted or facilitated direct copyright infringements.
In addition, the petition protests the ruling that Fung should not be entitled to safe harbor protection under the DMCA because he knew that isoHunt users were sharing copyrighted material. According to isoHunt’s legal team this goes directly against verdicts in other cases, such as the dispute between YouTube and Viacom.
With a re-hearing before a jury isoHunt is confident it can win the case as that will provide an opportunity to counter specific allegations of copyright infringement. If this request is granted the case is expected to continue for a few more years, perhaps making it to its 10th anniversary in 2016.
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