Wendy’s Blog: Legal Tags » Copyright in Congress, Court, and Public Yesterday, while hundreds of sites (including this one, along with Google, Wikipedia, and Reddit) were going black to protest SOPA and PIPA, the Supreme Court released its own copyright blackout, Golan v. Holder (PDF). Justice Ginsburg’s majority opinion held that the First Amendment did not prohibit reclaiming works from the public domain. Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Alito, gave a stirring dissent. Whereas forward-looking copyright laws tend to benefit those whose identities are not yet known (the writer who has not yet written a book, the musician who has not yet composed a song), when a copyright law is primarily backward looking the risk is greater that Congress is trying to help known beneficiaries at the expense of badly organized unknown users who find it difficult to argue and present their case to Congress. We see the same problem with SOPA and PIPA. Golan reminds us too that we can’t count on the courts to help us where Congress gets copyright wrong.
ACTA Update VI Subscribe to this blog About Author Glyn Moody's look at all levels of the enterprise open source stack. The blog will look at the organisations that are embracing open source, old and new alike (start-ups welcome), and the communities of users and developers that have formed around them (or not, as the case may be). Contact Author Email Glyn Twitter Profile Linked-in Profile Yesterday, a disturbing story appeared on the German taz.de site: EU MPs have received thousands of emails from ACTA opponents. Clearly, if true, that would be a shocking state of affairs. So I contacted the press office of the European Parliament to check out the story. First, that individual MEPs might set up their email clients with rules that junk anything to do with ACTA. The second point is important: that the European Parliament does have general anti-spam rules that catch mass mailings of similar texts. UpdateThe Pirate Party MEP Amelia Andersdotter has made an important point here.
Interpol's Red Notices used by some to pursue political dissenters, opponents When Iranian political activist Rasoul Mazrae sought shelter from his own government, he fled, headed for Norway via Syria. He was followed by a petition from Iranian officials that Interpol, the international police agency, list him as a fugitive. Despite the United Nations recognizing him as a political refugee, the same Syrian government that today is cracking down on its own dissidents used that Interpol alert to deport Mazrae to Iran in 2006. Mazrae was jailed for two years. His family told a UN rapporteur he was tortured to the point of paralysis, had blood in his urine and lost all of his teeth. Mazrae was sentenced to death, and human rights observers lost track of him. What Syria and Iran used to go after Mazrae was an Interpol "Red Notice." Interpol’s primary purpose is to help police hunt down murderers and war criminals, child sex offenders and wildlife poachers. ICIJ analyzed a snapshot of Interpol's Red Notices, published on December 10, 2010. He’s definitely a troublemaker.
A Battle Against the SOPA/PIPA Prohibition So much has been said, wrote, battled about the Stop Online Piracy Act and its twin Protect IP Act. I have curated diverse views on SOPA/PIPA on my Pearltrees. You can click on each pearl to access the link content: Some of the main issues, apart from the DNS blocking in itself and the threat to privacy by Deep Packet Inspection for instance, are the question of bogus Notice of Take Down and its chilling effect on freedom of speech. Have a look here at what Milton Mueller says about Deep Packet Inspection. The two studies one by Oxford University and the other by the Dutch group Bits of Freedom are a good illustration of the Notice of Take down chilling effect . Didn’t we, for generations, shared our best books with friends and family? Ultimately, it took time to regulate ISP immunity for third party content generally admitted. On ISPs/Search Engine liability, see here. See on ‘HADOPI, ACTA, Digital Economy Bill: From Human Rights to Economic Rights ‘ A clear SOPA Infographic timeline here.
Act on Acta now if you care about democracy and free speech | David Meyer Acta is the latest copyright enforcement scheme to cause alarm among digital activists. Given its reach, this is understandable. The anti-counterfeiting trade agreement is, despite its name, effectively an international treaty that forces signatories to criminalise "commercial-scale" copyright and trademark infringement. However, some elements would go further than existing laws in most of the countries that sign up. One reason for the heightened attention being paid to Acta is the recent derailing of the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the Protect IP Act (Pipa) in the US. Acta was the brainchild of the US and Japan. Through conduits such as WikiLeaks, it became clear that the US in particular was pushing for signatories to create "three-strikes" laws that could be used to kick repeat file-sharers off the internet. But what remains is troubling on several counts. Those defending Acta maintain that it would not bypass free speech and privacy safeguards in places such as the US and EU.
Russian spy agency targeting western diplomats | World news Russia's spy agency is waging a massive undercover campaign of harassment against British and American diplomats, as well as other targets, using deniable "psychological" techniques developed by the KGB, a new book reveals. The federal security service (FSB) operation involves breaking into the private homes of western diplomats – a method the US state department describes as "home intrusions". Typically the agents move around personal items, open windows and set alarms in an attempt to demoralise and intimidate their targets. The FSB operation includes the bugging of private apartments, widespread phone tapping, physical surveillance, and email interception. Its victims include local Russian staff working for western embassies, opposition activists, human rights workers and journalists. The clandestine campaign is revealed in Mafia State, a book by the Guardian's former Moscow correspondent Luke Harding, serialised in Saturday's Weekend magazine. Mafia State also reveals:
Richard O'Dwyer Richard O'Dwyer (born 5 May 1988) is a British computer programmer[1] who created the TVShack.net search engine while a student at Sheffield Hallam University. On 28 November 2012, it was announced that O'Dwyer and the US had reached an agreement to avoid extradition, and all charges had been dropped.[7] Judge Sir John Thomas called the outcome "very satisfactory", adding, "It would be very nice for everyone if this was resolved happily before Christmas".[8] TVShack[edit] Official TV Shack Logo O'Dwyer, a student at Sheffield Hallam University, created the search engine TVShack at the domain name TVShack.net in December 2007.[9][10] The search engine had the categories Movies, Television, Anime, Music and Documentaries, included the disclaimer "TV Shack is a simple resource site. Domain seizure[edit] On 30 June 2010 U.S. Besides O'Dwyer's TVShack.net, the other domains involved were Movies-Links.tv, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org and ZML.com. 2003 U.S.
How the European Internet Rose Up Against ACTA | Threat Level Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland sent a letter to his fellow leaders in the EU Friday urging them to reject ACTA, reversing Poland’s course with the controversial intellectual-property treaty, and possibly taking Europe with them. “I was wrong,” Tusk explained to a news conference, confessing his government had acted recklessly with a legal regime that wasn’t right for the 21st century. The reversal came after Tusk’s own strong statements in support of ACTA and condemnation of Anonymous attacks on Polish government sites, and weeks of street protest in Poland and across Europe. The seeming overnight success came after both years of work by European NGOs, and the spark of the SOPA/PIPA protests in America (which included Wired.com). ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is an international treaty that was negotiated in secret over the span of four years. Meanwhile, ACTA was causing furor across Europe as thousands turned out from Slovenia to Sweden to Germany.
Everest's ice is retreating as climate change grips the Himalayas | Environment | The Observer The climb to Everest base camp is a journey into a monochrome world, a landscape reduced to rock, ice and grey sky. The only spots of colour are the bright, domed tents of the few climbing teams willing to attempt the summit in the off-season. There are no birds, no trees, just the occasional chunks of glacier splashing into pools of pale green meltwater like ice cubes in some giant exotic drink. The stillness suggests nothing has changed for decades, but Tshering Tenzing Sherpa, who has been in charge of rubbish collection at base camp for the past few years, remains uneasy. "Everything is changing with the glaciers. Climbers had reported that they barely needed crampons for the climb, there was so much bare rock, Tenzing said. This much is known: climate change exists, it is man-made, and it is causing many glaciers to melt across the Himalayas. For that, scientists blame a blunder in a United Nations report that was presented as the final word on climate change.
U.K. Judge Orders Accused Copyright Pirate Extradited to U.S. Getty Images In a first-of-its-kind case, a judge in the U.K. has ordered that a British student who ran a website that linked to free films and TV shows can be extradited to the United States. Richard O'Dwyer, 23, is accused of running the TVShack website and earning thousands of British pounds in advertising before a crackdown by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He's now facing extradition to the U.S., where he would be brought up on charges of copyright infringement and face possible jail time. PHOTOS: Hollywood's Memorable Mea Culpas But Ben Cooper, an attorney for O'Dwyer, argues that it's questionable whether his client has broken the law, pointing to websites like Google and Yahoo, which also often point users to infringing content. At a hearing at the Westminster Magistrates Court this week, Cooper argued against making O'Dwyer a "guinea pig" for U.S. copyright law. District Judge Quentin Purdy put aside the concerns. PHOTOS: 18 Outrageous Entertainment Lawsuits