Have you ever wondered where the Lib Dems and Tories got the idea for their web blocking amendment to the Digital Economy Bill from? Well the Open Rights Group have the answer - from the BPI, "the representative voice of the UK recorded music business". Read the full article and the BPI's original draft here. And whilst you're there, why not join the Open Rights Group and help support their work?
My Lords, you can't please the entertainment industry and sustain privacy
Liberal Democrat peers have added an amendment to the Digital Economy bill which outlaws 'web lockers'. Have they never tried to send a large, personal, private file?
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 March 2010 16.26 GMT
- Article history
You never know quite what people are keeping in a locker - but that's because it's private Photograph: Getty Images
This Wednesday, I woke up to find an urgent email in my inbox from the Open Rights Group, letting me know that Lords Razzall and Clement-Jones, both Liberal Democrat peers, had introduced a web censorship amendment to Peter Mandelson's Digital Economy Bill.
I had a moment's confusion, because I assumed that the LibDems (a party I belong to) would have proposed a bill against web censorship. But no, our peers had put forward an amendment that would allow courts to order all of Britain's ISPs to shut off access to specific sites if these sites were found to be involved with copyright infringement.
Like many LibDems, I wrote to the Lords using WriteToThem and told them that promoting censorship – that is, shutting off entire swaths of the web because parts of a site infringed upon copyright – was not consistent with the values of the "party of liberty." So I was even more horrified to discover on Thursday that Razzall and Clement-Jones had withdrawn their amendment and entered a new one, jointly with the Tory Lords, that was specifically aimed at eliminating "cyber-lockers" (also called "web lockers") – services like Google Docs, YouSendIt, RapidShare and so on – that allow users to upload files that are too big to be attached to email, and send a private download URL to the recipient instead.
In a statement on Liberal Democrat Voice, Clement Jones defended his amendment, saying:
"Around 35% of all online copyright infringement takes place on non peer-to-peer sites and services. Particular threats concern "cyberlockers" which are hosted abroad.
"There are websites which consistently infringe copyright, many of them based outside the UK in countries such as Russia and beyond the jurisdiction of the UK courts. Many of these websites refuse to stop supplying access to illegal content.
"It is a result of this situation that the Liberal Democrats have tabled an amendment in the Lords which has the support of the Conservatives that enables the High Court to grant an injunction requiring Internet Service Providers to block access to sites."
Judging from the flood of outraged responses that followed, LibDem members aren't on board with this. And I'm among them. Web lockers are a critical piece of our internet life, and an attempt to ban them is worse than misguided; it's actively detrimental to the UK.
First, we must acknowledge that web lockers are useful for more than piracy. As our routine media files have increased in size - multi-megapixel images, home videos, audio recordings of meetings and so on - it's become increasingly difficult to use email to share data privately with family, friends and colleagues, because most email servers croak over really big files. For example, the sound editor for my podcasts uses a web locker to send me the mastered audiofiles for my review (and he's not the only audio person who relies on this; many's the time I've had an audiobook publisher send me an MP3 of an audiobook for review through a web locker).
There are plenty of personal uses too: my parents live in Canada and are always hungry for video of their granddaughter, but I don't want to make our home movies available on the public internet, so web lockers save the day for us. And when my immigration attorneys needed a mountain of scanned bank statements sent to their office for my application for permanent residence in the UK, a web locker made it easy to convey an encrypted archive to them.
There's no way to square this need for private file sharing with the entertainment industry's demand that all files be placed in the public sphere, where they can be inspected for infringement.
The reason web lockers are used for piracy is that they support privacy. A call to end web lockers is really a call to eliminate the public's ability to exchange personal information out of sight of the wide world. The only way you can be sure that someone isn't using a web locker to share a bootlegged movie is by shutting off my ability to privately send my mum a video of my toddler in the bath.
And separate from that, there's the infrastructural cost of establishing a Great Firewall of Britain in order to block access to web lockers. Developing a system whereby parts of the net can be shut off for all of Britain creates the possibility that someone will use the system to shut off the wrong part of the net. I'm not just talking about the danger of a hijacker breaking into the system to shut down or redirect traffic to legitimate sites (say, Microsoft Security Centre or the BBC), but the attractive nuisance presented by such a system. Once you create the facility to shut off parts of the internet that are implicated in civil disputes, how long will it be before people who've alleged a libel or are worried about a trade secret being not so secret are lobbying to have this turned to their aid?
Which isn't to say that this will actually stop infringement. File sharers have already demonstrated their ability to use the perfectly legal, widespread proxy services abroad to circumvent network blocks - ask any 14-year-old whose school network is censored by blocking software and I guarantee you'll get an education in how to evade this kind of thing. Which is great news if you're a pirate, but why should sound engineers, doting grandparents, and solicitors have to learn how to evade the Great Firewall in order to conduct their legitimate business?
It's not as if this hasn't been tried abroad. When South Korea and the US signed a Free Trade Agreement in 2007, Korea - a global powerhouse on the IT front - agreed to take major steps to lock down its Internet, including a prohibition on web lockers. Three years later, Korea has slipped badly in the global league tables and finds itself bringing more and more criminal sanctions against its young people.
"The party of liberty" needs to rein in these Lords, and not just because a failure to disavow them will cost the LibDems votes in May; but because this amendment is bad for the UK, bad for copyright, and bad for freedom.
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Human rights court rules that censorship of 1907 erotic novel The Eleven Thousand Rods 'hindered public access to a work belonging to the European literary heritage'
- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 February 2010 14.54 GMT
- Article history
'More likely to extinguish sexual desire' ... Guillaume Apollinaire. Photograph: APIC/Getty
Turkey violated freedom of expression laws and prevented access to Europe's literary heritage when it banned Guillaume Apollinaire's classic French erotic novel The Eleven Thousand Rods, the European court of human rights ruled yesterday.
The court found in favour of Turkish publisher Rahmi Akdaş, who complained to it after he was convicted under the Turkish criminal code "for publishing obscene or immoral material liable to arouse and exploit sexual desire among the population" when he released a Turkish translation of Les onze milles verges (The Eleven Thousand Rods) in 1999. The book details the erotic adventures of the debauched Romanian aristocrat Mony Vibescu and his fellow sybarites, containing graphic scenes of intercourse, sadomasochism, paedophilia, necrophilia, coprophilia and vampirism. It was banned in France until 1970 and Apollinaire himself never claimed authorship, fearing prosecution under France's public obscenity statute.
Akdaş had argued that the book was fiction, that it used techniques such as exaggeration and metaphor, that it contained no violent overtones "and that the humorous and exaggerated nature of the text was more likely to extinguish sexual desire", but the Turkish courts ordered the destruction of all copies of the book and fined the publisher approximately €1,100. An appeals court later quashed the destruction order, but upheld the conviction.
Akdaş subsequently complained to the European Court of Human Rights, saying the ruling violated Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Strasbourg-based court ruled yesterday that although states can interfere to protect morals, Turkey was wrong to do so in this case as more than a century had elapsed since Les onze milles verges was published. The erotic novel had also been released in many different languages in a number of countries, and had gained literary acclaim, it said, so its ban and Akdaş's conviction "hindered public access to a work belonging to the European literary heritage".
"The heavy fine imposed and the seizure of copies of the book had not been proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued and had thus not been necessary in a democratic society, within the meaning of Article 10. There had therefore been a violation of that provision," the ruling said.
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Depictions of Female Orgasm Being Banned by Classification BoardThe Board has also started to ban depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. This is in response to a campaign led by Kids Free 2 B Kids and promoted by Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett in Senate Estimates late last year. Mainstream companies such as Larry Flint's Hustler produce some of the publications that have been banned. These companies are regulated by the FBI to ensure that only adult performers are featured in their publications. "We are starting to see depictions of women in their late 20s being banned because they have an A cup size", she said. "It may be an unintended consequence of the Senator's actions but they are largely responsible for the sharp increase in breast size in Australian adult magazines of late".
(Image: 124, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from brittsuza's photostream)
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Despite having mysteriously disappeared from the BBC website, you can still see the Newsnight piece on Trafigura on YouTube.
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Inconvenient truths
Dec 3rd 2009
From The Economist print editionThe most creative attempt yet to get around freedom-of-information laws?
STRETCHING the law on the disclosure of public documents has been a competitive sport among civil servants ever since the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act was passed in 2000. It requires public bodies to reveal information on request, but provides 23 get-outs, designed to protect secrets that ought to stay under wraps because they threaten national security, personal privacy and so on. The rules are often interpreted in a creative way.
Now The Economist has discovered a contender for the most inventive interpretation to date. After thinking about it for nearly two years and trying out various exemptions, the Home Office has refused to release a confidential assessment of its anti-drugs strategy requested by Transform, a pressure group. The reason is that next March the National Audit Office (NAO), a public-spending watchdog, is due to publish a report of its own on local efforts to combat drugs. The Home Office says that to have two reports about drugs out at the same time might confuse the public, and for this reason it is going to keep its report under wraps.
This is believed to be the first time that a public body has openly refused to release information in order to manage the news better. The department argues that releasing its internal analysis now “risks misinterpretation of the findings of the [NAO] report”, because its own analysis is from 2007 and predates the NAO’s findings. The argument uses section 36 of the FOI act, which provides a broad exemption for information that could “prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs”.
The information commissioner, who polices the FOI act, declined to comment because the case was still open. But his predecessor, Richard Thomas, who stepped down in June, questioned the novel defence. “Certainly my office was always quite sceptical of anything which said publishing information is going to confuse the public. If that’s the case, normally you need to put out some extra material alongside it to provide adequate explanation. It’s not a reason for withholding something.”
Sir Alan Beith, the chairman of the parliamentary Justice Committee, which oversees the FOI act, was sharply critical of the Home Office’s excuse. “That’s really scraping the barrel. On those grounds you would have to ban the various hospital reports that are coming out at the moment [see article] because the public are confused about that too. It’s not an argument for censorship, it’s an argument for an even more open and clear debate.” The Home Office was making “a quite ridiculous attempt to hide from freedom of information,” he said.
The legality of the decision is also in doubt, after the department admitted that its refusal to release the document had not been approved by a minister, as is required by law. A Home Office spokeswoman called it an “administrative error”. Retrospective ministerial authorisation was being sought as The Economist went to press.
Legally or not, the Home Office will be able to hang on to its report for now because the FOI act takes so long to enforce. The commissioner’s office is said to be ready to order the release of the report now. If it does, the Home Office has 28 days to launch an appeal, which could take a year. In the meantime, drugs policy will continue to be shaped—or not—by research that the public paid for but may not see.
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What is your government doing to people behind this fence? Your tax dollars are helping keep you in the dark about it. (Press TV photo)
The U.S. has blocked the release of photos showing clear evidence that the United States is responsible for torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. We think someone with access to the photos should simply leak them on the web, saving tax payers a load of cash and letting people know just what it is our twin occupations are really about. We are calling on anyone who has access to the images to leak them and anyone else to copy this message and post it in order to increase the chance of it reaching anyone who might have access.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates won’t allow new photographs showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by Americans military personnel. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken the issue to court, and is suing for the release of 21 color photos under the Freedom of Information Act. Ultimately, this lawsuit will win, but why waste the taxpayer dollars to hide from tax payers what they’re funding in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Federal courts already rejected the White House arguments that the photos must be kept from public view. In respponse to this, Congress — which is largely populated by people who supported both invasions, knowingly swallowing vast doses of false information as if it were fact — gave Gates new power to keep them private.
We know the U.S. military and its many contractors are involved in torture and humiliation of detainees, actions in violation of both U.S. and international law. Evidence has been published in the past and it was shrugged off under the “few bad apples” plea. We know this isn’t the case and these new photos are yet still more tangible proof of that.
If you have access to these photos, release them. If you don’t have access to these photos, please cut and paste this call anywhere you can and let’s create a viral plea to someone with the power to be a whistle blower. Don’t wait for the courts.
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I spent Tuesday night at the Barley Mow pub in Westminster, central London, surrounded by 150 people who were outraged at the state of English libel laws. The event, which is part of a series of Skeptics in the Pub events around the country, started with a misquote from Star Wars that set the tone of optimism for the entire evening: “We are more possible than you can powerfully imagine.”
The mob, clamouring for a more liberal approach to free speech, was made up largely of bloggers, academics and sceptics. They all passionately share the same belief, which is that the freedom to criticise fairly and strongly is the cornerstone of debate and progress.
One of the main fears, expressed repeatedly during the evening, was the sheer cost of a libel case. Although the damages at stake might be just £10,000, going to trial can mean risking more than £1m. This means that a blogger has to ask whether he or she can afford the possibility of bankruptcy. Even if a blogger is 90% confident of victory, there is still a 10% chance of failure, which is why bloggers often back down, withdraw and apologise for material they believe is true, fair and important to the public.
I should point out that I am being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association. Indeed, last week I was at the Court of Appeal where I received permission to appeal against an earlier ruling on the meaning of my article. The original article was published 18 months ago, the case has cost me £100,000 and there is still a long way to go. My reason for not backing down is that I believe my article is accurate, important and a matter of public interest, as it relates to the use of chiropractic in treating various childhood conditions, such as asthma and ear infections.
Although my article was published in The Guardian, I am being sued personally. Fortunately, thanks to the success of my books, Fermat’s Last Theorem and The Code Book, I have the resources to fund my own defence. The case might seriously damage me but it will not bankrupt me. For bloggers, such a case could lead to financial ruin.
Allen Green, the event organiser, who blogs as Jack of Kent, summarised sentiment thus: “There is uncertainty and trepidation. The law currently treats bloggers as publishers, so they carry all the same legal risks of a publisher.”
For example, the website Bad Psychics has been forced to remove an article about a psychic healer. This problem was reported by Andy Lewis, who runs the Quackometer website and who is one of the most tenacious and insightful bloggers on the web. However, even Lewis fears the intimidation brought about by English libel law: “In light of what happened to Bad Psychics, I have to think seriously about what I write.”
Even if a blogger is prepared to stand by a blog, he or she can be undermined by the company hosting the blog. When the Society of Homeopaths took offence at Lewis’s criticisms of its regulatory practices, it threatened his web-hosting company. The company had no reason to put its neck on the line for a blogger who was paying just £9.99 a month, so it took down his blog. Luckily, Lewis’s blog has found virtual shelter with the Positive Internet Company, which is run by a team that cares about free speech on the web. It welcomed him with a brief e-mail: “I note your cowardly hosting company censored your homeopathy post. I am happy to offer you free hosting at my company. I hope you’ll find we’re sturdy vertebrates!”
The academic David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at University College London, was another blogger who dared to criticise a therapy that he felt lacked clinical support. After writing about the herbal medicine red clover, his university received a letter threatening legal action because it was hosting Colquhoun’s supposed defamatory blog. UCL removed the site after taking legal advice. Although the university later decided to welcome the professor back, partly due to pressure from academics around the world, he has also moved his blog across to Positive. It is important to note that academic journals also receive libel threats. Colquhoun himself was threatened for an article about chiropractors published in The New Zealand Medical Journal last year. Fortunately the editor was not prepared to back down, responding: “Let’s hear your evidence, not your legal muscle.”
Even academics being interviewed have to fear libel. The cardiologist Peter Wilmshurst gave an interview to an American journalist about a new device that he was testing. The company behind the device is now suing him. If he loses the case, he may also lose his house.
Few cases get to trial, but the bigger problem is that bloggers and academics are regularly censoring their own material in order to avoid litigation, and often they avoid writing about certain topics, companies and people.
Exactly the same situation exists in national newspapers. Events last week may have shifted public feeling towards a realisation that our libel laws are unjust and we are no longer a land of free speech.
There are clear ways forward, such as drastically reducing libel costs by capping fees, and introducing a public interest defence to protect those writing about health, safety and other issues. However, there has to be public support to push this issue up the political agenda.
Keep Libel Laws Out of Science has started a campaign for libel reform, which will have an effect far beyond the world of science if it is successful.
A statement already has 20,000 signatories, including the astronomer royal, the poet laureate, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais and Dara O’Briain. To add your name, visit www.senseaboutscience.org/freedebate.
The problem of libel is partly about what we as journalists, bloggers and academics can write, but it is also crucially about what you are allowed to read.
You deserve the same access to information as the rest of Europe and America.
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