Global minilinks for 2008-06-30

• Tor Project Blocked in China -- Finally
  After years of aiding those seeking anonymity and bypassing censorship, Tor is finally blocked by the Great Firewall of China.
• China's Overeager American Censors
  "Practically every U.S.-owned search engine has caved to the Chinese government's demands that they censor political Web sites in China. But none of them seem to agree on just what sites need censoring."
• Pirate Bay to Fight Swedish Wiretapping Act
  To offer VPN facilities to Swedish nationals and others.
• Dubbing 10: Right Holders Compromise at Last Moment
  DRM proposal for digital TV recording in Japan forced through just prior to Olympics.
• Pressure on Spain to Join France's Three Strikes
  John Kennedy of IFPI, Denis Olivennes push for three strikes in Spain.
• Internet Society France Calls for Withdrawal of Three Strikes
  Calls it "the Middle Ages of the Internet".
• Italian Institute for Privacy Formed
  In the wake of a recent scandal, when the Italian government deliberately placed the tax records of every Italian on a public website, a new pressure group is launched.
• EU Worries about Regulating Blogger Speech
  Bloggers "in a position to considerably pollute cyberspace", says one MEP.
• UK Hacker's Case Before Law Lords
  Alleged hacker takes his threatened extradition to the UK's highest court.

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Global minilinks for 2008-06-16

• British ISP Starts Sending Letters to Customers Accused of File-Sharing
  Virgin Media co-authors the letter with the BPI, which includes threats to terminate service.
• French Council of State Wants ISP Filtering Out of Three Strikes
  Does not like the expansion of non-judicial powers, rumors say.
• Mutualised Schemes
  Meanwhile: a French model for funding creativity, from Squaring the Net
• BT Internal Report Leak on Illegal Secret Phorm Test
  No-one was told; HTML was rewritten, unsuspecting customers data was mined.
• Botswana Considers New IP Laws
  "The copyright office will purchase a security device to authenticate all sound and audio visual recordings."
• Spanish P2P Company MP2P Technologies Sued by Recording Industry
  Defiantly, MP2P says it has been served with a lawsuit from "what remains of the four major record labels."
• Data Retention Challenged In Hungary
  New EU entrant joins Germany and Ireland in seeking a constitutional rejection of the EU directive.
• Yahoo India Faces Copyright Battle Without Safe Harbors
  Sued over a copyrighted video: Ars Technica thinks that Indian law will provide no liability protection.
• Japan Plans "Fair Use" Exemptions for Copyright
  Supported by Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's IP taskforce.

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Sweden and the Borders of the Surveillance State

A proposed new law in Sweden (voted on this week, after much delay) will, if passed, allow a secretive government agency ostensibly concerned with signals intelligence to install technology in twenty public hubs across the country. There it will be permitted to conduct a huge mass data-mining project, processing and analysing the telephony, emails, and web traffic of millions of innocent individuals. Allegedly these monitoring stations will be restricted to data passing across Sweden's borders with other countries for the purposes of monitoring terrorist activity: but there seems few judicial or technical safeguards to prevent domestic communications from being swept up in the dragnet. Sound familiar?

The passing of the FRA law (or "Lex Orwell", as the Swedish are calling it) next week is by no means guaranteed. Many Swedes are up in arms over its provisions (the protest Facebook group has over 5000 members; the chief protest site links to thousands of angry commenters across the Web). With the governing alliance managing the barest of majorities in the Swedish Parliament, it would only take four MPs in the governing coalition opposing this bill to effectively remove it from the government's agenda.

As with the debate over the NSA warrantless wiretapping program in the United States, much of this domestic Swedish debate revolves around how much their own nationals will be caught up with this dragnet surveillance. But as anyone who has sat outside the US debate will know, there is a wider international dimension to such pervasive spying systems. No promise that a dragnet surveillance system will do its best to eliminate domestic traffic removes the fact that it *will* pick up terabytes of the innocent communications of, and with, foreigners - especially those of Sweden's supposed allies and friends.

Sweden is a part of the European Union: a community of states which places a strong emphasis on the values of privacy, proportionality, and the mutual defence of those values by its members. But even as the EU aspires to being a closer, borderless community, it seems Sweden is determined to set its spies on every entry and exit to Sweden. When the citizens of the EU talk to their Swedish colleagues, what happens to their private communications then?

When revelations regarding the United Kingdom's involvement in a UK-US surveillance agreement emerged in 2000, the European Parliament produced a highly critical report (and recommended that EU adopt strong pervasive encryption to protect its citizens' privacy).

Back then, UK's cavalier attitude to European communications, and its willingness to hand that data to the United States and other non-EU countries, greatly concerned Europe's elected legislators. Already questions are being asked in the European Parliament about Sweden's new plans and their effect on European citizen's personal data. Commercial companies like TeliaSonera have moved servers out of Sweden to prevent their customers from being wiretapped by the Swedish Department of Defence. Sweden's own business community have expressed concern that companies may move out of Sweden to protect their private financial data.

Sweden has often led the charge for government openness and consumer advocacy, and has, understandably, much national pride in seeing its past policies exported and reflected in Europe and beyond. Before Sweden's MPs vote next week to allow its government surveillance access to whole Net, they should certainly consider its effect on their Swedish citizens' privacy. But it should also ponder exactly how their vote will be seen by their closest neighbors. If the Lex Orwell passes, Sweden may not need something so sophisticated as a supercomputer to hear what the rest of the world thinks about their new values.

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Global minilinks for 2008-06-01

• DNA Samples at WIPO
  Police entered WIPO headquarters to take saliva swabs from ten employees, after their diplomatic immunity was removed. Reports say the investigation relates to a "smear campaign" against the Deputy Director General.
• Protest British Telecom's Annual General Meeting in London July 16th
  Britons will protest Phorm's use of mass Net surveillance in ISP-hosted behavioral advertising systems.
• Olivennes Wants Three Strikes Exported to World
  ""That's what I hope", says Denis Olivennes, the creator of the French plan to letrightsholders throw users offline.
• Canadian ISP Faces Class Action Lawsuit over Throttling
  A Quebecois consumer group cites privacy issues and impeded service.
• Three Countries Appeal OOXML
  India, Brazil, and South Africa appeal the ISO approval of Microsoft's office format.
• White House Opposition Dooms Global Online Freedom Bill
  The President has come out against a bill that would restrict company's actions in "internet-restricting" countries.
• OECD Looks For Future of Internet In Youtube Videos
  The international org asks for video contributions on how the Net should be run, prior to their conference on the topic in South Korea in June.

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Freedom Not Fear: Europe's Growing Protest Against Net Surveillance

This weekend, marches and meetings across Germany will protest the overreaction of countries to the threat of terrorism, and the re-emergence of a surveillance state in that country. "Freedom Not Fear" is not a small event: over 20,000 people demonstrated in the last protest in September, and over thirty cities will be taking part in this weekend's demonstrations. The organizers hope to expand across Europe for an even larger protest on September 20th of this year [Update: the date has been changed to October 4th].

What has prompted such a fierce reaction? The core of the protest is anger at the European Union's passing of the Directive on Mandatory Retention of Communications Traffic Data, an EU regulation that mandates all European ISPs and phone providers to keep records on every landline, cell and Internet phone call, every email sent, and every Internet connection session, for as long as two years.

The data retention directive was passed in March 2006, with a requirement that EU countries put its requirements into national law by September 2007. Many countries have been dragging their feet, however, faced with the daunting task of weakening existing privacy law, as well as negotiating with communication companies to install and maintain the extensive storage and monitoring equipment required.

But the infrastructure to support the collection of gigabytes of data on innocent citizens is being put in place - and already it has expanded beyond even permissions granted by the new Europe-wide regulations. Denmark's implementation of the directive, one of the first, require ISPs to record the protocol and port number of every TCP/IP session (if "unfeasible", they can opt to only record every 500th packet). On the 19th May, the UK proposed a plan to nationalize data retention entirely: collecting all the data from all ISPs and phone companies and storing it in a central government database for ease of access.

As citizens across the continent realize the extent to which they will be monitored, resistance is growing. Digital Rights Ireland's long-running constitutional challenge to data retention will be heard in the High Court on Thursday, June 5th. The German group leading the protests this weekend, the Working Group on Data Retention, has its own constitutional complaint pending.

Data retention is also rearing its head in the United States, too, with FBI Director Robert Mueller telling Congress last month that compelling ISPs to log Americans' activity for two years would be "tremendously helpful". This weekend's Freedom Not Fear protests are solely in Germany, but the planned September demonstrations will take place across Europe. Perhaps it is time that concerned United States citizens joined the chorus, before data retention has a chance to reach its shores.

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Global minilinks for 2008-05-27

• Michael Geist - Ten More Questions for Industry Minister Prentice
  On the eve of Canada's DMCA, the politician in charge has plenty to answer for.
• German Phone Company in Spying Scandal
  Deutsch Telekom employees analyzed "several hundred thousand landline and mobile connection data sets of key German journalists reporting on Telekom and their private contacts."
• Gamer anger at Nokia's "Lock In"
  UK gamers battle Nokia's N-Gage's DRM and terms of service
• EU Rejects New Intellectual Property Rights for Sport
  "Unjustified protectionism and injurious to press freedom," say publishers.
• Shops Secretly Track Customers via Mobile Phone
  A less salubrious use of GNU Radio.
• Rolling Stone on "China's All-Seeing Eye"
  Naomi Klein on how China's censorship is being exported.
• Canada Watchdogs Investigate Deep Packet Inspection
  Are ISPs invading users' privacy?

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Global minilinks for 2008-05-10

• Press Freedom in the Arab World Goes Online
  An overview of the effect of the Net on freedom of speech in the Middle East. "The internet has been a godsend for freedom of expression in the Arab world," says the Egyptian-American syndicated columnist Mona Eltahaw.
• Google Grilled on Human Rights
  "We've seen little more than talk and defensiveness from Google since the problems emerged", says Amnesty International member proposing a shareholder vote on Google's behaviour in China.
• Vigils, Fundraising for Malaysia's Jailed Blogger
  Where almost every politician has a blog, citizen blogger Raja Petra remains under arrest for sedition. Petra's readers have already raised more money than is needed to pay his fine.
• MEPs Want More IP for Sports
  Sports teams and companies lobby the European Parliament to expand IP rights to cover more of sports.
• CCTV Has Failed to Cut Crime in the UK
  Surveillance camera footage used in less than 3% of cases.
• Privacy Competition for the Commonwealth
  The Privacy Commissioners of Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Canada, the Northern Territory, New South Wales and Victoria launch a $3000 competition about privacy for high school students.
• UK Starts Forcing Keys From Suspects
  The first cases under RIPA, where the police can compel individuals to disclose passwords or private keys.
• Freedom for Fouad Al Farhan
  Egypt's prominent imprisoned blogger is freed, after months of online campaigning.
• Google Changes Trademark Ad Policy in UK to Match US
  Allows European companies to advertise on keywords connected to a competitors' brand.
• Cuba Lifts Ban on Home Computers
  Internet access still forbidden.

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The Struggles of France's Three Strikes Law

As 2008 began, the international music industry was proudly predicting the dawning of a new age of co-operation between rightsholders, Internet companies and governments. The dynamic new President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, together with Denis Olivennes, the head of France's largest consumer electronics and media retailer, had announced a new policy of "graduated response" for the French Net. Users accused of repeated copyright infringement online would be first warned, then suspended from the online world, and finally banned for a year if they did not tow the line. Music industry representatives heralded it as a model that should be imitated across the globe: in IFPI's 2008 report, its CEO John Kennedy said this was the year that "ISP responsibility" for protecting the music industry "becomes a reality".

Six months on from the original Olivennes report, with growing objections across Europe, collapsing support for Sarkozy's administration at home, and still no "three strikes" law on any statute books, the entertainment industry is getting a little antsy. Last week, the French RIAA, le Syndicat national de l'édition phonographique (SNEP), announced a deadline to Sarkozy's ministers. Hervé Rony, SNEP spokesman, said "it would not be acceptable" for the three strikes law to miss the French Parliament's Summer schedule.

It looks like SNEP's demands are not going to be met. Before the "Loi Olivennes" can even reach parliament, it has to be examined by the French Counseil d'Etat, the senior jurists that advise the French executive and acts as France's supreme court.

They are not rushing their analysis. Just why might be gleaned from the leaked copy of the law sent to them for consideration (provided by Squaring the Net in French). Even after being moderated from earlier drafts, the document still describes a stunning shift in judicial and enforcement, both offline and on.

After explaining exactly why drastic measures are necessary (to "prevent the hemorrhaging of cultural works on the Internet") 1 the document outlines a powerful new government body, the High Authority for the Distribution of Works and the Protection of Rights on the Internet (La Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur Internet, or HADOPI).

As judge, jury, and executioner of "three strikes", HADOPI is born with wide-ranging powers over all French Internet users. The High Authority acts on reports of suspected infringement from rightsholder groups. Based on those accusations alone it can contact, warn, suspend and finally deny Net service to any French citizen. The High Authority has the right to obtain and peruse a year's worth of personal records from ISPs in the pursuit of their targets. They can order ISPs to include new filtering systems into their infrastructure, and can fine them up to 5,000 euros if they provide Net service to anyone on placed on the Authority's national Internet blacklist.

French Net users do not only have a new Authority sitting in judgment over them: the Loi Olivennes also requires them to police their own networks for the benefit of rightsholders. They will have an obligation to oversee their own network for Internet copyright infringement, and are liable for any infractions, even by strangers. Your only defense against the HADOPI guillotine is if you install on your home network one of their recommended "security devices". It's unclear what these may be: at minimum, it will be software to lock down your network shared drives, and ensure you never open your Wi-Fi again. The stage is set, though, for the government to recommend for home use the fingerprinting and monitoring systems that the copyright cartels are trying to push on YouTube and the phone companies. (And if you think such spyware at home is unlikely, remember that NBC recently pressured Microsoft to include such filters on your MP3 player).

If HADOPI's powers to cut users off, create government-required spyware at the ISP and home level, and pry into the private records of ordinary French citizens at the behest of a few music and movie companies seems draconian, you're not alone. This week, the French Internet trade group ASIC, which includes AOL, Yahoo, Google, Wikipedia, MySpace and others, wrote to the Ministry to complain about the disproportionality and injustices in the HADOPI procedure.

The beleagured Sarkozy administration (the President's support is now at 28%) is facing a great deal of criticism on many policy fronts, is looking at a packed legislative agenda for the Summer, and needs to divert executive resources for the upcoming French presidency of the EU. The last thing it wants to do now is to attempt to rush through a proposal that is deeply unpopular with both the public and business for the benefit of a single industry.

Three strikes is still on the agenda, both at the Élysée and in the recording industry's talking points. But its continuing rough ride through the French political system should stand as a warning to any other nation seriously considering it as a policy.

1. 1. And, incidentally, misleads the Counseil d'Etat as to how widely the Olivennes proposal is being imitated elsewhere. The document claims that Canada is considering "three strikes", and that the United States has already implemented a similar solution as "a result of agreements between ISPs and rightsholders". Neither is true.

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Knitwit BBC Goes After Dr Who Fans

Here's a fascinating UK legal analysis of an incident we see occurring all over the world: an over-eager rightsholder undermining Internet goodwill by pursuing their own fans for supposed IP infringements.

Andre Guadamuz, is a lecturer at the Edinburgh University school of law, and organizes the fantastic British conference on "geek law", Gikii. He was recently put in contact by the Open Rights Group with Mazzmatazz, a Dr Who fansite which posts knitting patterns of the current batch of Dr Who monsters, including those obedient servants of man, the Ood (see above).

BBC Worldwide, the commercial wing of the public service BBC, sent the site a demand to remove "any designs connected with DR WHO" -- even though the site was offering them free to anyone who wants to knit their own loveable Who-related terrors.

Guadamuz covers the legal ground, and suggests that, like many rightsholders, the BBC has less power to stop fans from creating their own transformative works than they might think. Sadly, that's not enough to save the woolly Ood designs which were taken down out of concern for just the threat of legal action.

As Guadamuz notes, the BBC and Dr Who production staff should know better than to pursue a campaign of online threats against their own fans. These are the people that kept the BBC's now-lucrative Who franchise going during years of neglect by its owners; these are the people who actively promote the current series; and, in the UK at least, these are the people who pay the bulk of BBC's salaries.

Like Dr Who's Ood, fans are happy to serve their favorite franchises when treated well. But if the BBC starts treating them like this, they can all too easily rise up and attack the very brand value the BBC is overzealously seeking to protect.

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Global minilinks for 2008-05-04

• Global Online Freedom Act To Get Hearing
  Rep. Chris Smith's bill to force companies to comply with US government standards on censorship, filtering and privacy in certain countries moves ahead.
• Egyptians use Facebook to Deter Censorship
  Dissidents collectively acting online to organize real world protests.
• China Beats US for Internet Population
  Now has 221 million users, to United State's 216 million.
• Jailed Chinese Journalist Shi Tao's Poem Follows Olympic Torch's Route Online
  The string of online activists jailed by the Chinese government dogs its Olympics preparations.
• Bypassing a Laptop's Fingerprint Login - Using Its Own Dirty Mouse
  Kim Cameron shows that a laptop has plenty of finger marks to undermine its own security system.
• Declared Income of All Italian Citizens Posted on Web
  Not a data leak, but a deliberate attempt to "fight tax evasion" by the outgoing Italian administration.
• A Short Film Commemorating the 1943 Dutch Population Registry Attack
  In occupied Holland, the resistance had to take desperate measures to stop misuse of collected personal data.
• EULAs in the UK
  British consumer groups and lawyers are becoming more and more concerned by EULA language.
• Google Hands Over Personal Data to Brazilian Authorities
  After fighting against revealing Orkut identities, Google has finally given data on 300 users to a Brazilian senate committee.
• Russian Prosecutors Eye Internet Censorship
  "The new proposal is for any website deemed to have hosted extremist material to be blocked by providers in Russia 'within a month,' Sizov said."
• Performing Rights Society Doing Well From Internet
  The UK collecting society is benefitting from a deal with YouTube and other digital platforms.

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