By Cory Doctorow at 9:59 am Friday, May 25
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Here's an undated ad from "Sugar Information, Inc" (our old friends), warning mothers that if they include their kids in their sugar-free, dieting lifestyles, they will be depriving the poor kiddlees of vital sugar and exposing them to "exhaustion." Obviously, this was before the cancer scares and other stuff about artificial sweeteners, because surely that's the major reason to keep your kids away from artificial sweeteners. I love the fact that they recommend sugar for dieters, too: "gives you the va-va-voom you need for all those exercises!"
Sugar!
By Cory Doctorow at 10:40 am Tuesday, May 22
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Michael Geist sez,
Canada's proposed Internet surveillance was back in the news last week after speculation grew that government intends to keep the bill in legislative limbo until it dies on the order paper. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews denied the reports, maintaining that Bill C-30 will still be sent to committee for further study.
My weekly technology law column reveals that behind the scenes, Canada's telecom companies have worked actively with government officials to identify key issues and to develop a secret Industry - Government Collaborative Forum on Lawful Access.
The secret working group includes virtually all the major telecom and cable companies, whose representatives have been granted Government of Canada Secret level security clearance and signed non-disclosure agreements. The group is led by Bell Canada on the industry side and Public Safety for the government.
It is designed to create an open channel for discussion between telecom providers and government. As the uproar over Bill C-30 was generating front-page news across the country, Bell reached out to government to indicate that "it was working its way through C-30 with great interest" and expressed desire for a meeting to discuss disclosure of subscriber information. A few weeks later, it sent another request seeking details on equipment obligations to assist in its costing exercises.
At a September 2011 meeting that included Bell Canada, Cogeco, RIM, Telus, Rogers, Microsoft, and the Information Technology Association of Canada, government officials provided a lawful access regulations policy document that offered guidance on plans for extensive regulations that will ultimately accompany the Internet surveillance legislation.
The 17-page document indicates that providers will be required to disclose certain subscriber information without a warrant within 48 hours and within 30 minutes in exceptional circumstances. Interceptions of communications may also need to be established within 30 minutes of a request with capabilities that include simultaneous interceptions for five law enforcement agencies.
How Canada's Telecom Companies Have Secretly Supported Internet Surveillance Legislation
By Cory Doctorow at 8:00 am Monday, May 21
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Buzzfeed's Michael Hastings reports on a revision to the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987, which prohibit the use of government disinformation and propaganda campaigns within the USA. The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas and Rep. Adam Smith from Washington State, would allow the US government to knowingly tell lies to its people in order to promote the government's own policies.
The new law would give sweeping powers to the State Department and Pentagon to push television, radio, newspaper, and social media onto the U.S. public. “It removes the protection for Americans,” says a Pentagon official who is concerned about the law. “It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”
According to this official, “senior public affairs” officers within the Department of Defense want to “get rid” of Smith-Mundt and other restrictions because it prevents information activities designed to prop up unpopular policies—like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Critics of the bill point out that there was rigorous debate when Smith Mundt passed, and the fact that this is so “under the radar,” as the Pentagon official puts it, is troubling.
The Pentagon spends some $4 billion a year to sway public opinion already, and it was recently revealed by USA Today the DoD spent $202 million on information operations in Iraq and Afghanistan last year.
Congressmen Seek To Lift Propaganda Ban
(Thanks, Owlswan!)
(Image: stalin - chinese propaganda booklet, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from uair01's photostream)
By Cory Doctorow at 5:59 am Saturday, May 19
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The Swedish news show Uppdrag Granskning has posted an hour-long investigative journalism piece establishing the link between the giant Swedish telcoms company Teliasonera and oppressive regimes around the world. Teliasonera sold and supported network equipment that was used to spy on dissidents, journalists, political reformers, union leaders, and the general public in Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Kazakhstan. Here's EFF's writeup of the piece:
The investigative report, titled “Black Boxes,” in reference to the black boxes Teliasonera allowed police and security services to install in their operation centers--which granted them the unrestricted capability to monitor all communications—including Internet traffic, phone calls, location data from cell phones, and text messages—in real-time. This has caused concern among Swedish citizens and Teliasonera shareholders, who had previously been assuaged by assurances from the telecommunications company that they follow the law in the countries in which they are operating. After a meeting with Peter Norman, Sweden’s Minister of Financial Markets, the chairman of Teliasonera’s board of directors issued a statement, announcing that they had launched “an action programme for handling issues related to protection of privacy and freedom of expression in non-democratic countries, in a better and more transparent way.”
Teliasonera’s declaration of good intentions may be too little too late after the damning evidence of abuse compiled by Uppdrag Granskning. Documents obtained by their investigators showed an Azerbaijani had his phone tapped after he published a piece about being beaten at the hands of government security agents while covering a story. The report also found that black-box surveillance was used in Belarus to track down, arrest, and prosecute protesters who attended an anti-government protest rally following the 2010 Belarusian presidential election. One Azerbaijani citizen says he was interrogated solely due to the fact that he voted for the Armenian representative in the 2009 Eurovision song contest.
Swedish Telcom Giant Teliasonera Caught Helping Authoritarian Regimes Spy on Their Citizens
By Cory Doctorow at 1:43 pm Friday, May 18
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Wired's David Kravets reports from the Copyright Office's triennial hearings on exceptions to the DMCA's rules against breaking DRM. Every three years, public interest groups supplicate themselves before the Copyright Office and beg for our right to jailbreak our devices and look inside our own property. Every three years, entertainment lawyers show up and demand that nothing of the sort come to pass, because their clients can only survive if it's illegal for you to decide what programs you get to run on the devices you buy. It's all rather revolting, legal sausage-making at its wurst.
Christian Genetski, general counsel of the Entertainment Software Association, told the Copyright Office, whose panelists included its top attorneys and Maria Pallante, the register of copyrights, that freeing Americans to bypass access controls on videogame consoles would decimate the gaming business.
“It will gut videogame consoles’ piracy protections,” he said. “We’re here today because our copyright interests are at stake.”
Allowing such jailbreaking, Hofmann countered, would allow the so-called homebrew community of game developers to play their games on the machines, while also allowing researchers to use the consoles like computers in the furtherance of science.
But the regulators were not clear whether the videogame hack was necessary. They suggested scientists could use computers for their research, and homebrew gamers can play those, too, on their computers.
Robert Kasunic, deputy general counsel of the Copyright Office, suggested that the benefits don’t outweigh the tradeoffs to piracy.
“How do you balance, for instance, the use of being able to put Pong on a homebrew system with the numbers we are aware of in terms of videogame piracy?” he asked, noting that millions of videogames are already being shared without authorization on The Pirate Bay.
So yeah, the Copyright Office generally believes that your rights to your actual, physical property are trumped by multinationals' metaphorical property rights in the things they sell you.
It’s Tinkerers v. Hollywood as Copyright Office Mulls New Jailbreaking Rules
By Cory Doctorow at 8:06 am Wednesday, May 16
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Yesterday, Byron Sonne was acquitted of all charges against him. Sonne is the Toronto-area security researcher who pointedly demonstrated the inadequacy and incoherence of the heavy-handed, $1.2B security arrangements for the G20 summit in 2010. Denise Balkissoon has done some of the best reporting on the bizarre trial that followed (after Sonne spent nearly a year in jail), and now she's got good commentary on the acquittal:
“Byron Sonne, you’re a free man,” said one of his lawyers, Joe DiLuca, as Sonne stood outside the courthouse.
“I can be a moron again on the internet,” Sonne said, as he ripped up court documents that listed the bail conditions—including a curfew and not using a cellphone—that he has lived with since May 2011...
Later on the day of the verdict, in Kensington Market, Sonne stood having a cigarette and discussing Anonymous and Gandhi with Alex Hundert, who pled guilty to counselling to commit mischief during the G20. “They took a somewhat radical person like me and said, ‘Let’s put the guy in jail with real radicals,'” said Sonne, who was not involved with organized activists in advance of the summit. “I’m not interested in playing by the rules anymore.”
Sonne said he intends to help non-technologically savvy activists learn to encrypt their computers and online communications. Police were unable to unencrypt one of Sonne’s hard drives, which led the Crown to argue that it must contain nefarious plans. “There’s nothing on there that wasn’t on my other computers,” said Sonne, who said he encrypted it for travelling over the U.S. border. “But it’s good to know that the technology works.”
Sonne aims to get back the computer security certification that was suspended during his arrest, and wants to start rebuilding his professional network.
Sounds like he needs a job. Toronto-area readers, take note!
Here's our previous Sonne posts.
Byron Sonne, found not guilty on all charges, has plans for the future
(Thanks, Denise!)
By Cory Doctorow at 11:07 am Tuesday, May 15
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Maira Sutton has a long, engrossing account of the popular protest at the Dallas session of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive treaty negotiation that includes a set of copyright rules that leave SOPA and ACTA in the dust. TPP's organizers -- especially in the USA -- have been hostile to any public participation or transparency. They even ordered a hotel to cancel the reservation made by activists who wanted to host their own parallel information session and then lied about it. Undaunted, activists, civil society groups, copyfighters, and other interested parties continue to dog TPP's heels. The Dallas meeting saw the notorious Yes Men "Corporate Power Tool" award ceremony. Even better, the hotel's bathrooms had their toilet paper replaced with TPP TP, custom-printed rolls that explained the problems with TPP.
Since the official planned event was scarcely sufficient to make a significant impact, Public Knowledge and American University’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property co-hosted a side event for negotiators to learn about the threats of harsh copyright enforcement. The panel included EFF’s International IP Director, Gwen Hinze, who spoke about the unbalanced outcomes non-U.S. Internet users and innovators would face if the current version of the IP chapter were passed. While the event was well-attended, civil society were ultimately forced to bear all the costs to put on this event.
Last week, 32 legal scholars sent a letter to the office of the USTR demanding transparency in the process. Including the release of the text and demand for real participation from civil society, they demanded the immediate release of “reports on US positions and proposals on intellectual property matters that are currently given only to Industry Trade Advisory Committee members under confidentiality agreements.” This is key because there is nothing that could justify the withholding of such reports that simply outline the U.S. position on intellectual property from the public. This is especially true given the fact that the U.S. government’s proposals could impede Congress from engaging in domestic legal reform of legislation regulating IP.
The USTR sent them a preliminary response the following day. Ambassador Kirk essentially blew them off, claiming that they have taken “extraordinary efforts” to have the whole negotiation process inclusive of civil society and the public. In the letter, he compared the level of transparency to Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) meetings, which indeed have always been top secret and therefore offer a laughably low bar of comparison.
TPP: Internet Freedom Activists Protest Secret Trade Agreement Being Negotiated This Week
By Cory Doctorow at 4:28 am Tuesday, May 15
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Tom Watson and Martin Hickman's Dial M for Murdoch is a timely, informative, infuriating insider account of the News International phone-hacking scandal that has occupied the news-cycle, off and on, for several years now (and shows no sign of slowing down). Watson, a veteran Member of Parliament -- and frequent target of the Murdoch press and its hackers and snoops -- was an early and consistent voice of alarm over the scale and illegality of the Murdoch tabloids' investigative methods. He's uniquely well-situated to tell this story. His co-writer, Martin Hickman, is a veteran investigative reporter who covered the story for the Independent. They make a good pair, and the narrative is relatively smoothly told and, at times, is very powerfully written.
The Murdoch papers -- and other UK tabloids and papers -- wield tremendous influence in the halls of British power. Dial M traces the intimate connections between the press and senior ministers, elected officials, and -- crucially -- the police in the UK. As the flagship Murdoch tabloid, News of the World attained the highest circulation of any English-language paper, and seems to have led the world in illegal investigation techniques as well. The early inklings of the scope of the company's criminality were systematically understated by the press, underrated by the police, pooh-poohed by officials (from every party), and buried.
But the story wouldn't die. There were just too many victims, a sympathetic poster-child for everyone -- dead soldiers and their families, terrorist bombing victims, royals, the families of murdered children, and so on. It was impossible for Scotland Yard to maintain its "nothing to see here" posture, not with so many different stakeholders and so many upwellings of outrage. It didn't help that the most senior police officers on the case were doing various kinds of business with Murdoch, or retiring into cushy sinecures as high-paid columnists and consultants. Neither could the impotent Press Complaints Commission maintain the fiction that it had investigated, censured, and cleaned house.
Murdoch's many enemies were willing to bring the fight, risking their private lives, risking their personal fortunes. Vindictive Murdoch executives drew up enemies lists, ordered deep background checks on Parliamentarians and attorneys, sent high-powered lawyers to lean on witnesses, set private eyes to follow Murdoch's opponents in secret, or dispatched obvious PIs to watch them openly and intimidatingly. Watson and Hickman are exhaustive in documenting the slimy depths plumbed by Murdoch's high-placed lieutenants and their thugs in their efforts to maintain the years-long suppression of the investigation.
They were ultimately undone by their own arrogance. You can't defend yourself by throwing your accomplices under the bus forever. Eventually, some of the minions on whom you've pinned the blame will start whispering your secrets to others. Likewise, you can't pin the blame on your fancy lawyers, insisting that they investigated your operation and gave it a clean bill of health -- they won't sit still for it. You can't just hack everyone who accuses you of hacking.
Indeed, the scale and arrogance of the Murdoch companies' illegality was both their undoing, and is the major problem with Dial M for Murdoch. Despite the authors' valiant efforts to be both exhaustive and engrossing, sometimes the sheer litany of the names of the hacked, the officials who participated in the coverups, the bribes and corruption -- well, it gets a little repetitive. This is the banality of evil, 350 pages' worth. The fact that it's hard to keep it all straight when it's delivered in sequence, with the benefit of hindsight, tells you a lot about how this managed to slip off the front pages so many times over the years. The revelations can be so similar that it's hard to remember that this is actually a fresh outrage, not just a re-reporting of last week's lies and crimes.
My other problem with Dial M is its unwillingness to set out an explicit agenda in defense of a free press. For all that the tabloids have gotten away with murder for decades, Britain has one of the most censorious and litigant-friendly environments when it comes to press freedoms. This is the land of the "superinjunction," where corporate criminals can order the news of their misdeeds to be vanished into the memory hole. This is the land where spurious libel claims can be used to silence science writers like Simon Singh and Ben Goldacre, who document the (sometimes literally) murderous quackery of "alternative medicine" gurus. Britain has the unwelcome distinction of being the world's center for "libel tourism," a place where despots can come to punish journalists who reveal their misdeeds.
One consequence of the Murdoch scandal has been a renewal of the call for "press regulation," to rein in the tabloids. But what the tabloids did was already illegal -- it didn't just violate a "code of conduct," it violated the actual statutes on the actual lawbooks. The problem wasn't that they slipped through a legal loophole: the problem was that they had the cooperation of crooked prosecutors and cops, and the collusion of highly placed officials, both elected and appointed. The problem wasn't the absence of a law, it was the absence of legal enforcement.
For example, Dial M paints Max Mosley as something of a hero of the fight against Murdoch. Mosley, a wealthy celebrity who'd been libeled by the tabloids, refused to settle and refused to back off, and spent a fortune bankrolling much of the legal action against Murdoch. For this, he is justly lionized by the authors. But Mosley also proposes far-reaching Internet censorship rules, and advance notice and "arbitration" whenever the press publishes stories about public figures, and an opportunity for those figures to seek injunctions against publication. I kept waiting for the authors to point out that one risk of the Murdoch scandal is that Britain's moneyed and powerful will seize on the opportunity to reverse the trend toward libel reform and other free-speech rules, and to demand expansions to the already onerous censorship and libel regime the country labours under.
Instead, Watson and Hickman walk a fine line between praise and condemnation of the press, without ever articulating what a "good" press should do, or what regulation they favour. There are plenty of opportunities for this, too: after all, the Guardian's Nick Davies was a key investigator of the scandal, and the authors credit him with bringing Murdoch to heel, at real personal risk. I wanted them to explain how they would create a policy or precedent that would let Davies investigate Murdoch at full tilt, but not be so broadly defined as to legalize the investigative techniques used by the Murdoch press. Indeed, the book opens with a quote from Bob Woodward, who brought down a president by publishing illegally leaked confidential material -- what system would protect Woodward and not Andy Coulson?
The other "other shoe" that never dropped in Dial M was a critique of the way that our IT systems are designed to be such juicy and easy targets for scumbags and crooks. It goes without saying that there's no excuse for the Murdoch invasions. But what on Earth are all these rich and powerful people doing sending unencrypted emails? Why do ministers of the government use voicemail servers operated by big, dumb phone companies like Vodaphone, instead of privately maintained Asterix instances run by Parliament's IT department (who, presumably, couldn't be tricked into resetting a voicemail PIN merely by calling up and saying, "It's Bob in tech support, and I'm on the other line with the Home Secretary and she's forgotten her PIN, can you reset it for me, mate?"). How is it that lawyers and clients send cleartext documents to one another, and how is it that ministers and civil servants keep the nation's most important information on unencrypted hard drives? It's one thing for an individual celebrity (or the bereaved parents of a murdered child or a felled soldier) to lack the wherewithal to protect themselves, but when it comes to officials and their staff, it's both inexcusable and inexplicable. Maybe the Murdoch snoops would still have gotten something on them with long lenses and PIs who shadowed them from home to work. But the fact that a crew of creepy dolts were able to sit in their basements hacking thousands of important and official phones and computers at a time is not merely an indictment of their employers at the tabloids. It should be a wakeup call to the establishment to put its house in order, get some training, and use the decades-old technology (that comes stock on every GNU/Linux box) in their official dealings.
Leaving aside those omissions, Dial M is a fabulous and infuriating read. If you have been trying in vain to keep all the crooked dealings straight, here, at last, is the scorecard you've been looking for. It's the perfect background reading for the nightly news, and I can't wait for a sequel once this business has been resolved (however long that might take!).
Dial M for Murdoch
By Cory Doctorow at 7:57 am Monday, May 14
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US Trade Ambassador Ron Kirk was in Dallas to kick off a corporate power-event to drum up support for the foundering, secretive Transpacific Partnership, a secret treaty that builds on the work of ACTA to establishing punishing copyright laws that include mandatory surveillance and censorship. The Yes Men crashed the gala, taking the podium to present Kirk with a "Corporate Power Tool Award," which he tried to accept, but his minders from the Secret Service wouldn't let him.
The first action began when a smartly-dressed man approached the podium immediately after the gala's keynote speech by Ron Kirk, U.S. Trade Representative and former mayor of Dallas. The man (local puppeteer David Goodwin) introduced himself as "Git Haversall," president of the "Texas Corporate Power Partnership," and announced he was giving Kirk and other U.S. trade negotiators the "2012 Corporate Power Tool Award," which "Haversall's" partner held aloft.
The crowd of negotiators and corporate representatives applauded, and "Haversall" continued: "I'd like to personally thank the negotiators for their relentless efforts. The TPP agreement is shaping up to be a fantastic way for us to maximize profits, regardless of what the public of this nation—or any other nation—thinks is right."
At that point, the host of the reception took the microphone back and announced that the evening's formal programming had concluded. But Mr. Haversall confidently re-took the microphone and warmly invited Kirk to accept the award.
Kirk moved towards the stage, but federal agents blocked his path to protect him from further embarrassment. At that point, a dozen well-dressed "delegates" (local activists, some from Occupy Dallas) broke into ecstatic dance and chanted "TPP! TPP! TPP!" for several minutes until Dallas police arrived.
Party ends badly for U.S. trade reps, federal agents
(via David Akin)
By Cory Doctorow at 9:47 am Friday, May 11
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Michael Geist sez, "Earlier this year, I appeared at the European Parliament's INTA Committee Workshop on ACTA. While I previously posted my opening remarks and a video of comments, I was unable to post the full report until granted approval by the European Parliament INTA Committee. That report is now available for download and is part of a full report on the workshop that includes all the background reports and a summary of the workshop discussion. My conclusion:"
This report concludes that ACTA's harm greatly exceeds its potential benefits. Given ACTA's corrosive effect on transparency in international negotiations, the damage to international intellectual property institutions, the exclusion of the majority of the developing world from the ambit of the agreement, the potentially dangerous substantive provisions, and the uncertain benefits in countering counterfeiting, there are ample reasons for the public and politicians to reject the agreement in its current form. In doing so, governments would help restore confidence in the global intellectual property system and open the door to a new round of negotiations premised on transparency, inclusion, and evidence-based policy-making.
The Trouble With ACTA: My Analysis of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
By Cory Doctorow at 4:00 am Thursday, May 10
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BrewDog is a spunky craft brewer in Scotland. Diageo is a titanic owner of booze brands, a kind of Wal*Mart of booze. The British Institute of Innkeeping is their mutual trade association.
Last Sunday, the BII's independent judges awarded BrewDog a prize for Bar Operator of the Year. When Diageo found out -- just ahead of the ceremony -- that a company affiliated with them hadn't won the prize, they threw a tantrum and said that they would cease all sponsorship of BII events unless the prize was given to them.
So BrewDog -- who'd been told in advance that they'd won -- sat at their table at the banquet with jaws on their chests as their competitor's name was read out by the announcer, and representatives from Diageo's chosen bar got up on stage to accept an award whose plaque clearly said "BREWDOG: BAR OPERATOR OF THE YEAR." The farce has turned into a scandal, and Diageo has issued a non-apology of the "mistakes were made" sort.
BrewDog is pissed:
As for Diageo, once you cut through the glam veneer of pseudo corporate responsibility this incident shows them to be a band of dishonest hammerheads and dumb ass corporate freaks. No soul and no morals, with the integrity of a rabid dog and the style of a wart hog.
Perhaps more tellingly it is an unwitting microcosm for just how the beer industry is changing and just how scared and jealous the gimp-like establishment are of the craft beer revolutionaries.
We would advise them to drink some craft beer. To taste the hops and live the dream. It is hard to be a judas goat when you are drinking a Punk IPA.
Walk tall, kick ass and learn to speak craft beer.
Diageo Screw BrewDog
(Thanks, Chris!)
By Cory Doctorow at 10:20 am Wednesday, May 9
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The MPAA and the DHS have teamed up to increase the punishment meted out to people who buy their DVDs instead of downloading the same movies for free from the Internet. Now when you buy a DVD, you'll get twice as many unskippable anti-piracy warnings, including one with a Homeland Security Investigations “special agent” badge next to the FBI badge, as well as a screen telling you that "digital theft harms the economy" and inviting you to visit a taxpayer-funded website that parrots a bunch of unsubstantiated lobbynomics numbers that the MPAA pulled out of its ass.
Only MPAA members are licensed to use these government logos, because other studios are apparently not entitled to a share of whatever imaginary protection the DHS is extending here.
Here's ThreatLevel's David Kravets:
That screen, like the others, presumably will be made unskippable during viewing. The warning says, “Piracy is not a victimless crime. For more information on how digital theft harms the economy, please visit www.iprcenter.gov.” The center’s logo is tough, too, with a hawk clenching a banner that reads “Protection Is Our Trademark”.
Oddly, such warnings are rarely included in versions uploaded and downloaded via P2P networks.
Pirates Beware: DVD Anti-Piracy Warning Now Twice as Fierce
By Cory Doctorow at 1:08 pm Tuesday, May 8
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American universities -- whose grads often owe six-figure debts that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, and that can even be charged against their Social Security checks -- are increasingly engaging in the (legal) tactic of refusing to provide transcripts to grad schools or employers as a means of extorting payment out of students who get behind. A good summary of what this means comes from NYU's Andrew Ross, a prof who helped start Occupy Student Debt: "It's worse than indentured servitude. With indentured servitude, you had to pay in order to work, but then at least you got to work. When universities withhold these transcripts, students who have been indentured by loans are being denied even the ability to work or to finish their education so they can repay their indenture." Dave Lindorff writes in the LA Times:
It's no accident that colleges are using the withholding of official transcripts to punish students behind in their loan payments. It turns out the federal government encourages the practice. Schools are not required by law to withhold transcripts, but a spokeswoman at the Department of Education confirmed that the department "encourages" them to use the draconian tactic, saying that the policy "has resulted in numerous loan repayments."
It is a strange position for colleges to take, however, since the schools themselves are not owed any money. Student loan funds come from private banks or the federal government. For federal Perkins loans, schools get a pool of federal money to apply to students' financial aid, and if students don't pay, that pool gets smaller. But the creditor is still the government, not the college. And in the case of so-called Stafford loans, schools are not on the hook in any way; they are simply acting as collection agencies, and in fact may get paid for their efforts at collection.
In Southern California, USC's website makes it clear that unmet loan obligations can prevent students from getting transcripts. As for the University of California, Kate Jeffery, director of student financial support for the system, says transcripts are withheld in the case of delinquent Perkins loans. She concedes it's a difficult issue but says that "it's the only tool we have to make them pay."
Holding transcripts hostage
(via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 2:09 pm Monday, May 7
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Mel from Dajaz1.com -- the hiphop blog that was seized for a year by the US government on the basis of a false and unsubstantiated copyright claim from the RIAA -- has posted the site's lawyer's memo, officially calling out the US government for its illegal participation in the RIAA's sloppy shakedown. Fenwick and West's Andrew P Bridges doesn't mince words, either:
The owner of Dajaz1.com appreciates the fact that the United States Government, on studying the matter further with all the information the RIAA could furnish, determined that there was in fact no probable cause to seek a forfeiture of the domain it had seized and held for a year.
That exoneration, however, did not remedy the harms caused by a full year of censorship and secret proceedings — a form of “digital Guantanamo” — that knocked out an important and popular blog devoted to hip hop music and has nearly killed it.
The original seizure was unjustified. The delay was unjustified. The secrecy in extensions of the forfeiture deadlines was unjustified.
Five details are notable here.
First, the seizure occurred pursuant to language the PRO-IP Act authorizing seizures of property used in connection with the making of, or trafficking in, “articles” in violation of copyright law. In that context, “articles” are physical items. The law does not authorize seizure of domains that link to other sites. So from the beginning this seizure was entirely legally unjustified, no matter what the allegations about infringement...
Second, seizing a blog for linking to four songs, even allegedly infringing ones, is equivalent to seizing the printing press of the New York Times because the newspaper, in its concert calendar, refers readers to four concerts where the promoters of those concerts have failed to pay ASCAP for the performance licenses.
Third, RIAA’s grand and sweeping attacks on dajaz1.com suggest that RIAA’s powers of demonization far exceed its ability to substantiate its malicious statements with specific and credible facts.
Fourth , when I explained that the blog publisher had received music from the industry itself, a government attorney replied that authorization was an “affirmative defense” that need not be taken into account by the government in carrying out the seizure. That was stunning.
Fifth, when discussing the secret extensions with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, I repeatedly asked the government attorney to inform the court that my client opposed any further extensions and asked for an opportunity to be heard. Not once did the government reveal those requests or positions to the court. The government should be embarrassed for keeping that information from the court.
This entire episode shows that neither the government nor the recording industry deserves any additional powers with new so-called “antipiracy” legislation, especially in the context where copyright law has been expanded and new anti-piracy remedies have been crafted ***16 times*** since 1982. This episode shows that the copyright establishment and the government are very much the “rogues” that deserve to be reined in.
Our Response To Unsealed Court Documents In Dajaz1 Domain Seizure
By Cory Doctorow at 10:19 pm Wednesday, May 2
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In the wake of a UK Parliamentary committee report that described Rupert Murdoch as "not fit" to run a major corporation, a powerful US senator has reached out to the judge presiding over an inquiry into the British "phone hacking" scandal to discover whether Murdoch and his empire violated US law, too. Jay Rockefeller, chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, has asked Lord Justice Levenson "whether any of the evidence you are reviewing suggests that these unethical and sometimes illegal business practices occurred in the United States or involved US citizens." Rockefeller's committee oversees the FCC, which regulates broadcast licenses in the USA. The Guardian's Ed Pilkington and Lisa O'Carroll report:
In a scathing attack on the Murdoch company, Rockefeller writes: "In a democratic society, members of the media have the freedom to aggressively probe their government's activities and expose wrongdoing. But, like all other citizens, they also have a duty to obey the law.
"Evidence that is already in the public record clearly shows that for many years, News International had a widespread, institutional disregard for these laws."
Rockefeller also asks for details emerging from the Leveson inquiry that indicated whether any News Corp executives based in New York were aware of illegal payments made by News of the World to British police and other public officials. "I would be very concerned if evidence emerged suggesting that News Corporation officials in New York were also aware of these illegal payments and did not act to stop them."
Murdoch facing new challenge as US senator contacts Leveson over hacking
