Anti-Westboro Baptist Church petition smashes White House records —

Writing in The Spectator, Kirsty Walker describes the chilling effect the UK's Leveson Inquiry (which is investigating illegal phone/email interception and systematic harassment by UK papers, especially tabloids) is having on legitimate reporting. The UK is already the best place in the world for rich and powerful people who want to use libel law to silence unflattering accounts of their actions. But with Leveson heading for its conclusion and the spectre of official press regulation (through which the government would license reporters and news outlets, and could remove those licenses at will), reporters and their editors are under increasing pressure from the world's dictators and local plutocrats.

Before the Leveson inquiry, I had received less than a dozen PCC complaints in my career and never had one upheld. But when I left, complaints were coming in at a rate of at least one a month. All required mini-investigations. Even foreign dictatorships know how to frighten Fleet Street. The last complaint I was asked to deal with was from a dictator, the King of Bahrain, who didn’t like the way I referred to criticism of his regime following the deaths of 40 people in anti-government protests.

Like 99.99 per cent of British journalists, I never hacked a phone or bribed a public official. During my long career in the House of Commons, I tried my utmost to be fair. If a story didn’t quite stack up, I would abandon it. A small handful of journalists did hire private investigators to do some horrific things, but there are laws in this country to deal with them.

How do we know that Lord Leveson’s report will encourage the rich, the powerful, the venal and the pompous to intimidate journalists and frighten papers into not covering stories? Because the prospect of it has done so already. How do we know that an elite will attempt to decide what it is appropriate for the rest of us to read about over our cornflakes? Because Leveson is already doing exactly that. This is the judge who read a 200-word article in the Times about how The Thick of It was planning to satirise him in one episode — and promptly asked the editor of that paper whether it was ‘appropriate’ for him to run the piece. It is all too easy to guess what a judge with such an attitude to newspapers will do for press freedom.

What the papers won’t say (Thanks, Marilyn!)

The Village Voice received an improbable trademark over the use of "BEST OF" in connection with lists of the best things on offer in various cities, and now they're suing Yelp for creating their own "Best of" lists. This ridiculous suit is only possible because of the US Patent and Trademark Office's bungling, terrible methods, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Corynne McSherry writes, and will only be resolved when the USPTO cleans up its act:

What is going on at the Patent and Trademark Office? For decades, folks have been complaining (with good reason) that the patent examiners need to do a better job of screening out bogus patent applications. It’s clear that the problem extends to the trademark side as well. The PTO has allowed companies and individuals to register marks in any number of obviously generic and/or descriptive terms, such as “urban homestead” (to refer to urban farms), “gaymer” (to refer to gay gamers), and “B-24” (to refer to model B-24 bombers).

Once a mark is registered, it is all too easy for the owner to become a trademark bully. And while companies like Yelp have the resources to fight back (as we expect it will), small companies and individuals may not. Just as dangerous, the trademark owner may go upstream, to intermediaries like Facebook who have little incentive to do anything other than take down an account or site that’s accused of infringement.

"Good enough for government work" isn't good enough for free speech. It’s time the PTO did its part to stop trademark bullies and tightened up the trademark application process. Fewer bogus registrations means fewer bogus threats, and more online creativity and competition. That's a win for everyone.

Stupid Lawyer Tricks (And How the PTO Could Help Stop Them)

Helen from the UK newspaper the New Statesman writes,

Today, the New Statesman is publishing an issue of the magazine guest-edited by the Chinese rebel artist Ai Weiwei. In the issue, Ai interviews the "blind dissident" Chen Guangcheng about the forced abortions and sterilisations required to enforce the one-child policy. He also speaks to a member of the "50 Cent party" - China's "paid trolls", given half a dollar every time they derail an online conversation. There are also pieces by human rights lawyers, activists, film makers and artists - as well as Ai's 170,000 Twitter followers giving their thoughts on the future of China.

We're expecting the NS website to be banned in China - and deleted from search results - after doing this, so it's vital to get the issue out by other means. We've created a PDF version in Mandarin, and uploaded it to PirateBay, and other torrent sites. That way, people on VPNs in China, can get it, and pass it around. The page I'm sending has information on how to do that. China wants to restrict its people from telling the truth about their lives. We hope the internet can set them free.

Taking on the "Great Firewall of China" (Thanks, Helen!)

A reader writes, "On September 24, Greece's Cyber Crimes division arrested a 27 year old man on charges of blasphemy, for his website that mocks a well-known Greek monk Elder Paisios, using the name Elder Pastitsios (the even better-known Greek pasta dish). The link is to a Greek blog, which shows a religious procession through the streets of Athens last Friday led by local Pastafarians in protest of the arrest, during which pastitso was distributed to the crowds as a holy blessing. It's being widely reported that the arrest was instigated not by the Greek Orthodox church, but by the neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn, who currently hold seats in Parliament. The Twitter hashtag for the story is #FreeGeronPastitsios."

Αναλυτικό ρεπορτάζ από τη λιτανεία και περιφορά του παστιτσίου στα Εξάρχεια

Philippines Senator Vicente Sotto III has been embroiled in a series of plagiarism scandals -- most recently, he gave a speech including phrases from a Robert Kennedy, Jr address, without credit or acknowledgment -- and has attracted a lot of vocal online criticisms. He was also instrumental in the passage of a broad, censorious "cybercrime" bill, and he warned his critics (whom he derides as "professional fault-finders") that "Once the cybercrime bill is enacted into law, they will be accountable for what they say or write."

Now it seems he has made good on this threat. The signed version of the Philippines Cybercrime Bill classes "libel" with spam, child pornography, and other crimes, thanks to an amendment he introduced -- though this amendment was never debated.

Who inserted that libel clause in the Cybercrime Law at the last minute?

Republic Act No. 10175: AN ACT DEFINING CYBERCRIME, PROVIDING FOR THE PREVENTION, INVESTIGATION, SUPPRESSION AND THE IMPOSITION OF PENALTIES THEREFOR AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES (Thanks, Charles!)

The Canadian mint sent a legal threat to a folk-singer called Dave Gunning, objecting to his use of photos of pennies in the liner notes on his latest CD, No More Pennies, which eulogizes the Canadian one-cent piece, now discontinued.

My friends in the commonwealth sometimes don't understand what the practical difference is between "Crown copyright" (where the government holds a copyright to the works it creates at taxpayers' expense) and the US system, where government works automatically enter the public domain. But here it is: the right of Canadian artists to create art about the decisions of the Canadian government is contingent on the government's permission -- and is subject to an arbitrary fee levied by the state.

After a good deal of public embarrassment, the mint backed down, but it continues to assert that it holds a copyright in the image of Canadian currency.

On the other hand, if Mr Gunning wants to reissue his CD jacket with pictures of American pennies, he'll be on safe ground.

The Globe and Mail's Brad Wheeler describes Gunning's answer to the mint:

After an initial run of 2000 albums had already been produced, Gunning was notified that he’d need to to pay $1,200 for the rights to the penny image. After Gunning spoke to CBC Radio One’s Mainstreet Halifax about the fee and a “penny drive” to cover the costs, the Mint waived the royalty.

The ubiquitous currency will no longer be circulated in Canada as of Feb. 4, 2013. No More Pennies, Gunning’s 10th album, is, in his words, a “heartfelt tribute to the passing of the penny.” The vanishing of the loosest of loose change is a metaphor for the passing of time.

Although the copyright fee for the album’s initial run of 2,000 albums was waived, the Mint has conditions tied to any future copies of the CD. Gunning has made the requested alterations to the original design and has resubmitted his application for permission to use the one-cent likenesses. The Mint will now decide on what amount, if any, it will charge the musician. “We’re not preventing Dave Gunning from commemorating the penny through his album,” says Christine Aquino, the Mint’s communications director. “The issue is the use of the image, and we’ll be working with him on that.”

Canadian folk singer fighting with the Mint over pennies

(Image: CANADA, GEORGE V 1920 ---FIRST ISSUE, SMALL ONE CENT a, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from woodysworld1778's photostream)

Experience the Iranian Internet in central London —

On Wired, Geeta Dayal looks at the state of automated copyright enforcement video-bots, the mindless systems that shut down the Hugo awards livestream, took down NASA's own footage of the Curiosity landing, and interrupted the video from the DNC. Dayal examines the legal status and necessity for these bots (dubious); their ability to model copyright's full suite, including fair use (nonexistent); and the business reasons for deploying them (cowardly). She also looks at what's at stake when our ability to communicate with one another is suborned to the profit-maximization strategies of giant copyright holders.

“The companies that are selling these automated takedown systems are really going above and beyond the requirements set for them in the DMCA, and as a result are favoring the interests of a handful of legacy media operators over the free-speech interest of the public,” says Parker Higgins, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The notice-and-takedown regime created by the DMCA allows copyright holders to send a written notice to an online hosting service when they find their copyright being violated. The online service can then escape legal liability by taking down the content fairly promptly, and the original poster has the opportunity to dispute the notice and have the content reinstated after two weeks.

But that regime breaks down for livestreaming. For one, if a valid copyright dispute notice is filed by a human, it’s unlikely that a livestream site would take it down before the event ends, nor, under the law, is it actually required to. On the flipside, if a stream is taken down, the user who posted it has no immediate recourse, and the viewership disappears.

The Algorithmic Copyright Cops: Streaming Video’s Robotic Overlords

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a comprehensive, multi-lingual guide to keeping sites that are undergoing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks alive.

Denial of service (DoS) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are increasingly common phenomena, used by a variety of actors—from activists to governments—to temporarily or indefinitely prevent a site from functioning efficiently. Often, the attack saturates the target with server requests designed to flood its bandwidth, leaving the server unable to respond to legitimate traffic.

Though the owners of major sites often have the resources to fend off or even prevent such attacks, smaller sites—such as those belonging to small independent media or human rights organizations—are sometimes permanently disabled due to a lack of resources or knowledge.

This guide aims to assist the owners of such websites by providing advice on choosing an appropriate webhost, as well as a guide to mirroring and backing-up their websites so that the content can be made available elsewhere even if their site is taken down by a DoS or DDoS attack.

Keeping Your Site Alive