Boing Boing » law

Annoying lawsuit for Annoying Orange

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 23 May 2013 02:23:44 +0000

An advertising agency is suing the creators of Cartoon Network's The Annoying Orange, accusing them of ripping off a character, The Talking Orange, that they created for a 2005 public information ad. [Mercury News]

Book review: information security for lawyers

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 21 May 2013 18:00:30 +0000

On Slashdot, a reader called benrothke reviews a book called Locked Down: Information Security For Lawyers. This sounds like a vital book -- my experience of lawyers (and accountants, doctors and other professions that deal with sensitive information) is that they really don't get information security, routinely transmitting potentially compromising documents in the clear as email attachments. Not only don't they understand PGP -- they think it's good security to attach an encrypted ZIP archive to one email and follow it up with another email containing the password to decrypt it (facepalm). Anything that gets this sort of profession thinking well about security is most welcome.

The book quotes an ABA 2011 technology survey in which 21% of large law firms reported that their firm had experiences some sort of security breach, and 15% of all firms reported that they suffered a security breach. It is figures like those which show that attorneys really need to read this book and take the information to heart.
The books 17 chapters are in a readable 150 pages, with an additional 120 pages of appendices. Written in an easily understandable style and non-technical for the technologically challenge lawyer.
When it comes to the security of client data, in chapter 4 the authors write that encryption is a topic that most attorneys don't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. But it has reached a point where attorneys must understand how and when encryption should be used. Just as important, they need to know about key managements, and what good encryption is. The chapter provides a high-level detail on what needs to be done regarding encryption.
Chapter 13 is on secure disposal, is an important topic to everyone, and not just lawyers. Digital media needs to be effectively disposed of; and for many lawyers, they often think that means reformatting a hard drive or simply erasing files. The chapter effectively details the issues and offers numerous valuable hardware and software-based solutions.

Book Review: Locked Down: Information Security For Lawyers

Locked Down: Information Security For Lawyers [Amazon]

What the Mounties pirate

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 19 May 2013 17:03:44 +0000

Travis sez, "The Pirate Party of Canada has uncovered that IP addresses from within the RCMP and Industry Canada are used to download copyrighted material. The point here isn't that they are downloading, it's that because all we have are IP addresses we don't know who is actually doing the downloading."

Patent lawyers: Help! The evil Makers won't let us apply for bullshit 3D printing patents!

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:10:36 +0000

Two minor characters from my novel Makers have apparently come to life and written an article for 3D Printing Industry. These two people are patent lawyers for Finnegan IP law firm, Washington, DC, which I don't recall making up, but this is definitely a pair of Doctorow villains (though, thankfully, I had the good sense not to give them any lines in the book -- they're far too cliched in their anodyne evil for anyone to really believe in).

These patent lawyers are upset because the evil Makers (capital-M and all!) are working with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to examine bad 3D printing patents submitted to the US Patent and Trademark Office. The problem is that 3D printing is 30 years old, so nearly all the stuff that people want to patent and lock up and charge rent on for the next 20 years has already been invented, and the pesky Makers are insisting on pointing out this inconvenient fact to the USPTO.

This breaks the established order, which is much to be preferred: the UPSTO should grant all the bullshit patents that companies apply for. The big companies can pay firms like Finnegan to file patents on every trivial, stale, ancient idea and then cross-license them to each other, but use them to block disruptive new entrants to the marketplace. The old system also has the desirable feature of arming patent trolls with the same kind of bullshit patents so that they can sue giant companies and disruptive startups alike, and Finnegan can be there to soak up the tens of millions of dollars in legal fees generated by all this activity.

Can't these darned Makers understand? The point of a patent isn't to protect novel, useful inventions! It's to put the brakes on out-of-control innovation and to ensure that the children of the partners at Finnegan can go to a good college! What will happen to GDP if we divert money from the honest business of barratry and allow it to be squandered on making and selling stuff that people find useful?

The America Invents Act changed U.S. patent law to allow preissuance submissions, a mechanism by which third parties can submit patents or printed publications to the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) for consideration during patent examination, along with “a concise description of the asserted relevance of each submitted document.”[2] The U.S. Congress intended preissuance submissions to help the USPTO increase the efficiency of examination and the quality of issued patents.[3] Congress did not, however, intend the use of this mechanism to interfere with patent examination.[4] Nor did it intend preissuance submissions to allow for third party protest or preissuance opposition.[5] Yet a segment of the 3D printing (3DP) community, known as Makers, is using preissuance submissions as a sword to oppose 3DP-related patent applications. Perhaps more importantly, they are leveraging the concept of crowdsourcing to do so, potentially creating problems for patent applicants everywhere.[6]
To understand why and how Makers are mobilizing to challenge patents through presissuance submissions, one must first understand what 3DP is, and the composition of the 3DP community. 3D printing—more formally known as additive manufacturing—is a technology that creates three dimensional objects from CAD files. There are many legacy and emerging 3DP technologies. Generally, 3DP works by fusing layer upon layer of materials, such as plastics, powder metals, and ceramics, to build a final, fully formed product, much as Athena sprung full-blown from the head of Zeus. This process requires a digital 3D model of the product, stored in a CAD file, and a 3D printer. Digital product models can be obtained by either (1) designing the product with a CAD program; (2) downloading an existing CAD file from the Internet; or (3) scanning an existing product with a 3D scanner to create a CAD file. Further, almost anyone can buy a 3D printer today; they are sold through Skymall and at Staples. Where 3DP was once cost prohibitive for most, ‘prosumer’ and home printers are now available at reasonable prices.

Crowdsourcing Prior Art to Defeat 3D Printing Patent Applications

(via Beyond the Beyond)

(Images: Caricature of William Otto Adolph Julius Danckwerts, Caricature of Charles Russell, Leslie Ward/Vanity Fair/Wikimedia Commons)

Hacking Politics: name-your-price ebook on the history of the SOPA fight

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:37:09 +0000

Hacking Politics is a new book recounting the history of the fight against SOPA, when geeks, hackers and activists turned Washington politics upside-down and changed how Congress thinks about the Internet. It collects essays by many people (including me): Aaron Swartz, Larry Lessig, Zoe Lofgren, Mike Masnick, Kim Dotcom, Nicole Powers, Tiffiny Cheng, Alexis Ohanian, and many others. It's a name-your-price ebook download.

Hacking Politics is a firsthand account of how a ragtag band of activists and technologists overcame a $90 million lobbying machine to defeat the most serious threat to Internet freedom in memory. The book is a revealing look at how Washington works today – and how citizens successfully fought back.
Written by the core Internet figures – video gamers, Tea Partiers, tech titans, lefty activists and ordinary Americans among them – who defeated a pair of special interest bills called SOPA (“Stop Online Piracy Act”) and PIPA (“Protect IP Act”), Hacking Politics provides the first detailed account of the glorious, grand chaos that led to the demise of that legislation and helped foster an Internet-based network of amateur activists.

Hacking Politics

Law profs and librarians to Congress: government edicts should not be restricted by copyright

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 16 May 2013 16:01:18 +0000

Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez, "105 law professors and law librarians have endorsed a call to change U.S. Copyright law to exclude edicts of government. Edicts are "the law" and include all pronouncements of government that are binding on citizens and residents, including statutes, regulations, court opinions, and legally-mandated codes. If ignorance of the law is no excuse, then we must all be able to read, know, and speak the law without restraint. The text of the proposed amendment reads:"

“Edicts of government, such as judicial opinions, administrative rulings, legislative enactments, public ordinances, and similar official legal documents are not copyrightable for reasons of public policy. This applies to such works whether they are Federal, State, or local as well as to those of foreign governments.”

The Edicts of Government Amendment (Thanks, Carl!)

3D printed guns and the law: will judges be able to think clearly about digital files when guns are involved?

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:09:36 +0000

My latest Guardian column is "3D printed guns are going to create big legal precedents," and it looks at an underappreciated risk from 3D printed guns: that courts will be so freaked out by the idea of 3D printed guns that they'll issue reactionary decisions that are bad for the health of the Internet and its users:

More interesting is the destiny of the files describing 3D printed guns. These model-files have been temporarily removed from the internet at the behest of the US State Department, which is investigating the possibility that they violate the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Wilson says that he's on safe ground here, because the regulations do not cover material in a library, and he says the internet is like a library. As this is taking place in the US, there's also the First Amendment to be considered, which limits government regulation of speech.
Here's where things get scary for me. Defense Distributed is headed for some important, possibly precedent-setting legal battles with the US government, and I'm worried that the fact that we're talking about guns here will cloud judges' minds. Bad cases made bad law, and it's hard to think of a more emotionally overheated subject area. So while I'd love to see a court evaluate whether the internet should be treated as a library in law, I'm worried that when it comes to guns, the judge may find himself framing the question in terms of whether a gun foundry should be treated as a library.

3D printed guns are going to create big legal precedents

Porno copyright troll to Georgia judge: "Ignore California judge! They have gay marriage!"

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 May 2013 15:00:27 +0000

When US Federal Judge Otis Wright ruled against Prenda Law (a gang that used sloppy accusations of illegal downloads of pornographic movies to extort millions from people who didn't want the embarrassment of being publicly sued), he ordered Prenda's lawyers to give copies of his ruling to judges in all the other places where they were suing their victims. Judge Wright's ruling called Prenda a "fraud" and said its lawyers engaged in "moral turpitude."

One of Prenda's most colorful lawyers is Jacques Nazaire. He's asked a judge in Georgia to ignore the Judge Wright's order, because Judge Wright is a California judge, and California has gay marriage.

It doesn't stop there. It notes that California courts have different immigration rules and (randomly) that NY has different gun rights. Basically, it throws out every hot button issue that stereotypical conservatives might disagree with stereotypical liberals on.
Of course, all of that is meaningless. While it's true that Judge Wright's ruling is in no way a precedential ruling for the Georgia court, it's still a ruling about federal law, not any specific state law. And the ruling itself is about flat out misconduct (including potential racketeering and tax evasion claims) by the plaintiff in this case, because of actions in a nearly identical case. That's not about California having a "mandate" over Georgia. It's about very relevant additional information that the court should know about.
Nazaire then goes on to list out a ridiculous parade of horribles that he claims would happen if the Georgia court "followed the aforesaid California Order" including that law firms wouldn't be able to use boilerplate text any more. This makes absolutely no sense at all. First of all, the inclusion of Judge Wright's order is not about having the Georgia court "follow" the order, but adding additional important information about the parties in this particular case. Separately, the idea that adding a California ruling into the docket suddenly means lawyers wouldn't be able to cut and paste any more... just doesn't make any sense at all.

Prenda Lawyer Says Judge Wright's Order Is Inapplicable In Georgia Because California Recognizes Gay Marriage [Mike Masnick/TechDirt]

US State Department orders removal of Defense Distributed's printable gun designs

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:00:15 +0000

The US State Department has ordered Defense Distributed to take down the designs for a working 3D printed gun, citing export control rules set out in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Defense Distributed's Cody Wilson is appealing, and says that ITAR does not apply to "non-profit public domain releases of technical files designed to create a safe harbor for research and other public interest activities" -- though this carve out is for works stored in a library. Wilson's appeal may turn, then, on whether the Internet is a library for the purposes of this regulation. In the meantime, the designs are still up on The Pirate Bay, and are for sale in printed form in an Austin bookseller. More than 100,000 copies of the designs were downloaded from Defense Distributed's servers in the brief time that they were online.

“Until the Department provides Defense Distributed with final [commodity jurisdiction] determinations, Defense Distributed should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled,” reads the letter, referring to a list of ten CAD files hosted on Defcad that include the 3D-printable gun, silencers, sights and other pieces. “This means that all data should be removed from public acces immediately. Defense Distributed should review the remainder of the data made public on its website to determine whether any other data may be similarly controlled and proceed according to ITAR requirements.”
Wilson, a law student at the University of Texas in Austin, says that Defense Distributed will in fact take down its files until the State Department has completed its review. “We have to comply,” he says. “All such data should be removed from public access, the letter says. That might be an impossible standard. But we’ll do our part to remove it from our servers.”

Wilson's project is raising some important legal questions, such as whether design files can be considered expressive speech under the First Amendment, and whether the Internet is a library. The question of code-as-speech was famously considered in the Bernstein case, where strong crypto was legalized. However, as we discovered in the 2600 case, judges are less charitably inclined to code-as-speech arguments when they're advanced by non-academics, especially those with counter-culture stances.

Impact litigation -- where good precedents overturn bad rules -- is greatly assisted by good facts and good defendants. I would much rather the Internet-as-library question be ruled on in a less emotionally overheated realm than DIY guns.

State Department Demands Takedown Of 3D-Printable Gun Files For Possible Export Control Violations [Andy Greenberg/Forbes]

(Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)

New law will fix the DMCA, make jailbreaking, unlocking and interoperability legal - your help needed!

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:16:40 +0000

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) have introduced a landmark technology bill called The Unlocking Technology Act of 2013 [PDF] that reforms the way our devices our regulated. It fixes a glaring hole in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), changing the rules so that you are allowed to remove restrictions and locks from your devices provided that you don't violate other laws (as it stands, removing a lock, even to do something legal, like installing unapproved software on your iPhone or change carriers, is banned by the DMCA). The bill clarifies that security researchers don't violate the law by publishing information about flaws in the devices we trust and depend upon, and makes it legal to break "lock-out codes" that stop mechanics from fixing cars.

This is a watershed moment in 21st century technology law, and it's desperately needed. Every day that goes by sees us more dependent on devices that are increasingly designed to be as opaque as possible -- devices made by companies whose business-model treats customers as adversaries who undermine profits when they turn to third parties for software, repairs and services. It is only the presence of the terrible rules in the DMCA that makes this business attractive -- without these rules, technology locks would be quickly broken in the marketplace and competition -- as well as transparency -- would thrive. If you want to be sure that the devices that fill your rooms, your pockets -- and increasingly, your body -- are well-behaved and trustworthy, please support this bill.

FixTheDMCA.org and a broad coalition of groups are calling on Americans to write to their representatives in support of this bill. Until now, almost all technology activism has been reactive, fighting against bad rules. We finally have the chance to make some good rules, to establish a positive agenda for freedom, trustworthiness and transparency in the devices that form the nervous system of the 21st century.

"The Unlocking Technology Act of 2013" has 3 parts:
- It amends Section 1201 to make it clear that it is completely legal to "circumvent" if there is no copyright infringement.

- It legalizes tools and services that enable circumvention as long as they are intended for non-infringing uses.

- It changes Copyright Law to specify that unlocking cell phones is not copyright infringement.

You can read the full text of the bill here.

Finally, there's a bill in Congress that legalizes cell phone unlocking and fixes the DMCA.

Prenda law judge says porno copyright trolls are frauds, identity thieves; $80K in fines and disbarment pending

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:02:29 +0000

Judge Wright has issued his long-awaited ruling in the case of Prenda Law, the notorious porno copyright trolls who used fraud and bullying to extort millions from Internet users by threatening to sue them for downloading pornography videos with embarrassing titles. Prenda used a combination of offshore shell companies, obfuscation, and even identity theft to disguise the ownership of their con, and when they landed before Judge Wright, it all started to unravel.

The judge has fined Prenda $80,000 ($40K in fees, doubled for punitive measure) and asked the FBI to investigate them for racketeering. He held that their operation was a fraud, that they had committed identity theft, and, importantly, identified Steele, Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy as the "de facto owners" of Prenda. He's asked the lawyers' bar associations to have them disbarred. And he made a lot of Star Trek references!

Nevertheless, it is clear that the Principals’ enterprise relies on deception. Part of that ploy requires cooperation from the courts, which could only be achieved through deception. In other words, if the Principals assigned the copyright to themselves, brought suit in their own names, and disclosed that they had the sole financial interest in the suit, a court would scrutinize their conduct from the outset. But by being less than forthcoming, they defrauded the Court. They anticipated that the Court would blindly approve their early-discovery requests, thereby opening the door to more settlement proceeds.
As for penalties, they begin with attorneys' fees. Prenda will have to pay these to the two defense lawyers who have been instrumental in this case: Morgan Pietz and Nicholas Ranallo. Wright awards $36,150 in fees to Pietz, $1,950 in fees to Ranallo, as well as legal costs (copying and filing fees, for example) to both. He then doubles the amount "as a punitive measure," arriving at $81,319.72. In a footnote, Wright says that the sum "is calculated to be just below the cost of an effective appeal"—a final dig at the Prenda business model of settlement offers just below the cost of defense. The Prenda folks have 14 days to pay up.
The harshest penalties are saved for last. First, Judge Wright suggests the Prenda lawyers should be disbarred, writing "there is little doubt that Steele, Hansmeier, Duffy, [and] Gibbs suffer from a form of moral turpitude unbecoming an officer of the court." In many states, including California, crimes reaching the standard of "moral turpitude" lead to automatic disbarment. Wright will be referring the four lawyers to every state bar in which they are admitted to practice...
Third, though Plaintiffs boldly probe the outskirts of law, the only enterprise they resemble is RICO. The federal agency eleven decks up is familiar with their prime directive and will gladly refit them for their next voyage. The Court will refer this matter to the United States Attorney for the Central District of California. The [court] will also refer this matter to the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service and will notify all judges before whom these attorneys have pending cases.

Prenda hammered: Judge sends porn-trolling lawyers to criminal investigators [Joe Mullin/Ars Technica]

CISPA is not dead! It's coming back -- get ready!

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:42:33 +0000

Evan from Fight for the Future sez, "All of your phone calls, emails, petition signatures, and tweets are working. The privacy-killing back-from-the-dead zombie bill CISPA is a bit stalled in the Senate, with over $605 million in lobbying spent on it already, it's bound to be back to haunt us in some form soon. So we made an infographic to get everyone up to speed. This Spring, we'll be organizing the largest online privacy protest in history, to send this bill back where it belongs. Join us?"

Infographic: how money corrupts Congress, and what to do about it

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:10:13 +0000

Money wins Elections is an excellent, scrolling infographic that illustrates how money corrupts the American legislative process, showing that time and again, Congress has voted the way that the big money told it to, against the prevailing popular opinion. It's all in support of the American Anti-corruption Act, and it was created by Tony Chu for part of his MFA thesis project.

Money wins Elections

"Peeping Toms" tumble into ladies' restroom

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:49:11 +0000

In Atlanta, a pair of Peeping Toms reportedly fell through a bathroom ceiling as they tried to spy on women below. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that the 26- and 27-year-old men are suspected of climbing up into the men's restroom ceiling area, crawling over the womens' side, then promptly falling into a lavatory stall.

Fair use decision: remixing is legal even when there is no intent to comment or parody original work

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:41:37 +0000

A Second Circuit Appeals Court judge has handed down a landmark fair use decision in Cariou v. Prince. Prince, a collagist, remixed some of Cariou's photos and sold them for large sums. Cariou argued that the new works were not fair because Prince did not create his collages as a comment on the original (one of the factors judges can consider in fair use cases is whether the new work is a commentary or parody). The lower court agreed, and ordered destruction of the show catalogs and a ban on hanging the new works. But the appeals court overturned, and held that a use can be fair even when it doesn't comment on the original.

"We conclude that the district court applied the incorrect standard to determine whether Prince's artworks make fair use of Cariou's copyrighted photographs," writes Judge B.D. Parker in the decision, which was released this morning. "We further conclude that all but five of Prince's works do make fair use of Cariou's copyrighted photographs. With regard to the remaining five Prince artworks, we remand the case to the district court to consider, in the first instance, whether Prince is entitled to a fair use defense."
"This decision absolutely clarifies that the law does not require that a new work of art comment on any of its source material to qualify as fair use," attorney Virginia Rutledge told A.i.A. by phone this morning after a preliminary survey of the decision.
"This is a major win for Prince on at least two counts," NYU art law professor Amy Adler told A.i.A. via e-mail. (She consulted on the case but was speaking for herself.) "The court decided that artwork does not need to comment on previous work to qualify as fair use, and that Prince's testimony is not the dispositive question in determining whether a work is transformative. Rather the issue is how the work may reasonably be perceived. This is the right standard because it takes into account the underlying public purpose of copyright law, which should not be beholden to statements of individual intent but instead consider the value that all of us gain from the creation of new work."

Richard Prince Wins Major Victory in Landmark Copyright Suit [Brian Boucher/Art in America]

(Thanks, Tim!)

CISPA is dead! (again) (for now)

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:24:15 +0000

After months of activist agitation and a crushing disappointment from the cowards in the House of Representatives, the US senate has effectively killed CISPA, a sweeping Internet surveillance proposal. This is astoundingly great news! But CISPA died once before, and came back from the dead, and it will not likely stay dead this time around either. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, etc etc etc:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said in a statement on April 18 that CISPA's privacy protections are "insufficient."
A committee aide told ZDNet on Thursday that Rockefeller believes the Senate will not take up CISPA. The White House has also said the President won't sign the House bill.
Staff and senators are understood to be "drafting separate bills" that will maintain the cybersecurity information sharing while preserving civil liberties and privacy rights.
Rockefeller's comments are significant as he takes up the lead on the Commerce Committee, which will be the first branch of the Senate that will debate its own cybersecurity legislation.
Michelle Richardson, legislative council with the American Civil Liberties Union, told the publication she thinks CISPA is "dead for now," and said the Senate will "probably pick up where it left off last year."

CISPA 'dead' in Senate, privacy concerns cited [Zack Whittaker/ZDNet]

The last words of murderer Richard Cobb

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:29:35 +0000

"Wow, that is great, that is awesome."

Snooper's Charter is dead! (for now)

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 06:50:34 +0000

Aw, yeah! The UK Communications Data Bill -- AKA the "Snooper's Charter," a sweeping, totalitarian universal Internet surveillance bill that the Conservative government had sworn to pass -- is dead! Yesterday, Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats in Parliament, announced that his party would not support the bill, and effectively killed it. Though I've been bitterly disappointed with some of the terminal compromises the LibDems have made, this makes me grateful to have them in Parliament. The kind of universal surveillance proposed in the Snooper's Charter was broadly supported by the last Labour government, which radically expanded state surveillance powers, and by the Tories -- thank goodness for the LibDems mustering a scrap of backbone at last!

The only downside is that the Open Rights Group had a whole series of great "Professor Elemental" videos that used pointed, excellent humour to mock and undermine the bill and drum up opposition to it, and now that's all going to go to waste (I blogged episode one yesterday).

Aw, who'm I kidding? This kind of thing never stays dead.

The snooper's charter has reminded Nick Clegg, finally, he is a liberal

UK Home Office commissions a super villain-catching-machine from Prof. Elemental

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 08:34:27 +0000

In this startling debut episode, the renowned Professor Elemental receives a commission from the government to build a marvellous snooping machine with which to catch the badduns. The Home Secretary has the right man for the job -- with the good professor's marvellous device, the Home Office will be able to spy on every communique that traverses the British Information Superhighway!

(It's all about the Snooper's Charter, the barmy UK legislative proposal to give nearly unlimited snooping powers to the government and police, and this video is courtesy of the good people at the Open Rights Group.

Professor Elemental build a Great Machine for Catching Villains Chapter One (Thanks, Jim!)

Let's Bring Digital Liberties into the Big Conversation

Aengus Anderson — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:15:17 +0000

Photo: Shutterstock

We've been CISPA'd again.

For a second year the US House has passed the embarrassingly vague Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a bill that could scatter your personal information like a tornado hitting a trailer park. Echoing last year, the Obama administration has threatened to veto CISPA if it fails to incorporate privacy controls, but we shouldn't have to rely on presidential intervention or the Senate's questionable wisdom to save us. Though Congress is gifted in the arts of incompetence and believes digital liberties only matter to basement-dwelling teens, we cannot entirely vilify the House, either. If there's one thing our representatives actually represent about us, it is our ignorance of technology.

Since you are reading Boing Boing, it is very likely that you live in the midst of the digital liberties conversation. You probably know why CISPA is a flawed bill, how it continues the tradition of other dangerously flawed bills like SOPA, and that there are truly insane examples of cyber-law on the books already. If I had to guess, I'd say you might be up to speed on lawsuits against NSA surveillance and follow the work of people like James Bamford and Laura Poitras. Maybe you have given money to groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Fight for the Future. Maybe you work for them. If you're here, you understand that digital liberties matter and have ramifications for everyone, everywhere. They are not a hobby issue for the tech community.

This is why I want to issue a friendly challenge to you: push digital liberties into the big conversation.

The status quo isn't good enough. Yes, we have an incredible array of talented organizations fighting for our digital liberties through the courts, political system, and public sphere. These groups helped unleash the widespread outrage that defeated SOPA and have brought unlikely allies together to resist congressional stupidity, but promising signs can lull us into missing a crucial point: digital liberties are a non-issue for most Americans. If we want to stop bills like CISPA from becoming annual events, we need to make digital liberties visible to people who don't read Boing Boing or Wired and have never heard of Demand Progress or the Center for Democracy and Technology. Website blackouts and hashtags won't reach this audience. Instead, we need to explain how digital liberties fit into the broader ecosystem of ideas.

I issue this challenge not as an expert in digital liberties, law, or technology, but as an audio producer. I spend my time interviewing Americans and following our intellectual trends for a project called The Conversation. The project is an odd mixture of documentary, oral history, philosophy seminar, and confession booth—essentially a series of long, unstructured, and interconnected conversations about the future. The Conversation's format has allowed me to ask interviewees about subjects outside of their specialties, see who is talking to whom, and learn what people are concerned about.

Equally interesting, I've learned what people are not concerned about. Of fifty-five interviewees, only James Bamford addressed digital liberties, and I had invited him to join The Conversation for exactly that reason. A few, like media theorist Douglas Rushkoff and biohacker Tim Cannon, were well-versed in questions of privacy and cyber-security but, because of time constraints or priorities, did not weave them into our conversations. Elsewhere, digital liberties were invisible, even when civil liberties or other aspects of the internet (like social networking) were on the table. The isolation of digital liberties was accentuated by the dense web of connections between other topics: environmentalists, economists, lawyers, scientists, artists, and theologians all seemed to have some working knowledge of each other's fields and concerns.

The Conversation isn't a perfect barometer of American thought, but all of the interviewees are thoughtful, curious, informed, and engaged in conversations about the future. In other words, they are the very sort of people who should be aware of digital liberties. But if a core-sample of our most versatile thinkers don't know about what is at stake, how much can we expect from the casually engaged citizen?

It is worth asking why digital liberties are invisible to so many Americans. Are they dauntingly hard to understand, the perfect combination of technical and legal esoterica? Or do they appear to lack the existential bite of climate change or an economic collapse? Are we so fearful of foreign hackers that we would trade our privacy for the promise of security? Perhaps we take digital liberties for granted or, worse, think they're a lost cause.

We know digital liberties are not a lost cause, but our situation is precarious and there are many legislative battles to come. CISPA could die in the Senate, but its successors will continue to stagger towards us like zombies. To stop these bills at their source and achieve a representative, fair, and genuinely secure future, we have to seek natural allies outside of the tech and civil liberties communities. Few issues could generate a more powerful coalition, but the burden falls upon us to show how digital liberties affect everyone, from the environmental activist to the apolitical suburbanite, the performance artist to the research scientist. Making these connections will be a challenge of language and framing, but it is a challenge we can meet—and if we want to push digital liberties into the big conversation, we need to start now.

Finnish websites go dark tomorrow to call for copyright reform

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 20:25:29 +0000

As I've written before, Finland has an amazing grassroots legislation system that allows citizens to put any proposal with more than 50,000 popular endorsements to a Parliamentary vote, and the test-case for it is an eminently sensible copyright reform proposal that has been wildly successful. Tomorrow, Finnish websites will go dark and invite their readers to sign the petition, moving the proposal to Parliament.

The proposal addresses this concern by making small scale piracy a fine, at maximum, rather than its current maximum of two years in jail. By moving down the maximum penalty, the Finnish police would be more limited in their investigation methods - they won't be able to spy on citizens online, or confiscate property.
The remaining main points in the proposal include allowing fair use of copyrighted material for teaching and research, and adds fair use rights for parody and satire, which is unclear in the current legislation.
Artists' rights would also be strengthened, allowing artists to license their works through open licenses. Additionally, if a fan of an artist is being proscecuted, then the artist will have the ability to tell their representative organization to stop suing on behalf of their content.
Many decisions involving copyright in Finland are discussed and decided within a Copright Council, which includes representatives from the old media industries, such as the TV and recording industries. The proposal would also add internet operators, software, and gaming industries into that mix, as the scope of copyright expanding all the time.

Finnish Sites Blacking Out Tomorrow In Support Of Copyright Petition [Greg Anderson/Arctic Startup]

Sign the petition [Finns only]

Viacom gets its ass handed to it again by a court in its YouTube lawsuit

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:36:40 +0000

For years, Viacom has been embroiled in a bizarre lawsuit against Google, asserting that Google had a duty to figure out exactly which videos uploaded by it users infringed on Viacom's copyrights and stop them from showing (Viacom's internal memos showed that they themselves had paid dozens of companies to secretly upload Viacom videos disguised to look as leaked internal footage to YouTube, and that the company's executives had viewed the suit as a way to seize control of YouTube from Google and run it themselves).

Now, yet another court has told Viacom that its legal theory about the duty of online service providers to proactively police its users' uploads is totally, unequivocally WRONG. Viacom has pledged to appeal.

In a ruling released today, the court gave a total victory to Google/YouTube, granting it summary judgment, saying that YouTube was protected from claims of infringement via the DMCA's safe harbors, and mocking Viacom's legal theories at the same time. Might as well jump right in with some quotes, including the money quote that Viacom's legal theory is "extravagant." Elsewhere the judge calls it "ingenious."
Viacom's argument that the volume of material and "the absence of record evidence that would allow a jury to decide which clips-in-suit were specifically known to senior YouTube executives" (Viacom Opp. pp. 9-10) combine to deprive YouTube of the statutory safe harbor, is extravagant. If, as plaintiffs assert, neither side can determine the presence or absence of specific infringements because of the volume of material, that merely demonstrates the wisdom of the legislative requirement that it be the owner of the copyright, or his agent, who identifies the infringement by giving the service provider notice. 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3)(A). The system is entirely workable: in 2007 Viacom itself gave such notice to YouTube of infringements by some 100,000 videos, which were taken down by YouTube by the next business day. See 718 F. Supp. 2d 514 at 524.
Thus, the burden of showing that YouTube knew or was aware of the specific infringements of the works in suit cannot be shifted to YouTube to disprove. Congress has determined that the burden of identifying what must be taken down is to be on the copyright owner, a determination which has proven practicable in practice.
This was the crux of Viacom's argument. That because they could show a lot of infringement, and here and there point to some evidence that some people at YouTube might have known of general infringement, then the burden should be on YouTube. But the court clearly calls them on this, noting that's not what the law says, nor does it make sense. Instead, under the law, the burden is on Viacom and that makes sense.

YouTube Wins Yet Another Complete Victory Over Viacom; Court Mocks Viacom's Ridiculous Legal Theories [Mike Masnick/TechDirt]

Med Express uses broken Ohio law to silence critics who say true things

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 01:17:37 +0000

Are you a lawyer in Ohio? If so, your pro-bono services are urgently needed to defeat a trollish, bullying legal action from Med Express, a company that sells refurb medical equipment on eBay. The company is suing one of its customers for providing accurate, negative feedback on eBay's comment system, trying to establish a precedent that saying true things on the Internet should be illegal if it harms your business. They're relying on the fact that Ohio has no anti-SLAPP laws -- laws designed to protect people against the use of litigation threats to extort silence from critics -- and have admitted that, while they have no case, they believe that they can use the expense of dragging their victims into an Ohio court to win anyway. Ken from Popehat has more:

This is the ugly truth of the legal system: litigants and lawyers can manipulate it to impose huge expense on defendants no matter what the merits of their complaint. Censors can abuse the system to make true speech so expensive and risky that citizens will be silenced. Regrettably, Ohio does not have an anti-SLAPP statute, so Med Express and James Amodio can behave in this matter with relative impunity. If Ms. Nicholls has to incur ruinous legal expenses to vindicate her rights, the bad guys win, whatever the ultimate outcome of the case.
Unless, that is, you will help Amy Nicholls stand up — not for $1.44, but for the freedom to speak the truth without being abused by a broken legal system.
If you are an attorney practicing in Medina County, Ohio, please consider offering pro bono assistance. Mr. Levy will be coordinating assistance, and I can tell you from personal experience that it is a privilege to work with him. Help give Med Express and James Amodio the legal curb-stomping they so richly deserve. Justice, karma, and the esteem of free speech supporters everywhere will be your reward.
If you aren't an attorney, you can help, too. Med Express should not be permitted to act in this manner without consequence. The natural and probable consequence is widespread publication of their conduct. Help by publicizing the case on Facebook, Twitter, on your blog, on forums, and on every other venue available to you. Ask yourself — would you want to do business with a company that abuses the legal system to extract revenge against customers who leave truthful negative feedback?

The Popehat Signal: Stand Against Rank Thuggery In Ohio

Copyright enforcement as the New Prohibition: Andy Baio's speech on fair use

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:11:22 +0000

Andy Baio's "The New Prohibition" is a speech given at a Creative Mornings/Portland event, expanding on his must-read "No Copyright Intended" post, about the way that the complexity of copyright and fair use effectively criminalizes a whole generation of creators. Baio documents his own experience of being bullied into giving $35K to a photographer rather than spend a decade and hundreds of thousands of dollars proving that his limited-run, 8-bit remix of a photo was fair use, and makes some practical suggestions for what a modern fair use should look like, if it is to preserve the new, networked creativity.

The New Prohibition

Guatemala: Rios Montt genocide trial, day 18. "If I can't control the Army, then what am I doing here?"

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 18:06:26 +0000

Rios Montt listens to a prosecution witness, during the tribunal.

I am blogging from inside the Supreme Court in Guatemala City, where the trial of former Guatemalan Army General and US-backed dictator Guatemalan José Efrain Rios Montt and his then chief of intelligence Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez has reconvened for the 18th day. Here's a good recap of Monday's proceedings, and here's another.

For the past two weeks, I have been here in Guatemala with Miles O'Brien, observing the trial in court and interviewing people involved in the story for a forthcoming report on PBS NewsHour. We have interviewed Rios Montt's daughter, Zury Rios, who is her father's most diligent defender. We have interviewed scientists whose work is entered as evidence in the trial. We traveled to the Ixil area where the conflict at the center of this trial took place, and we interviewed Ixil Maya survivors about their experiences in the US-backed counterinsurgency attacks. We interviewed government officials who worked closely with Ríos Montt, who believe that what happened was not genocide, but the unfortunate collateral damage of a just war against "International Communism."

As covered in previous Boing Boing posts, the past few weeks of the trial have included personal testimonies from dozens of Ixil Maya survivors of mass killings, rapes, torture, forced adoption, and displacement. More than two dozen forensic anthropologists from the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) have testified about human remains exhumed and analyzed from mass graves. Many other expert witnesses, or "peritos," have testified: among them, Patrick Ball of hrdag.org, who analyzed data of deaths during the armed conflict, to help judges make their decision about whether the mass killings constituted a focused attack by the Guatemalan Army, led by Ríos Montt, against the Ixil Maya ethnic group.

In other words: Was this genocide?

Not according to "The Foundation Against Terrorism," which published a 20-page paid newspaper supplement over the weekend here in Guatemala. "The Farce of Genocide in Guatemala: a conspiracy perpetrated by the Marxists with the Catholic Church." It's an interesting read.

The 18th day of the tribunal began this morning with defense witnesses for Ríos Montt and Sanchez.

The first witness to be called by the defense today was General Mauricio Illescas García, a lieutenant during Rios Montt's regime. Garcia's testimony focused on the notion that Ríos Montt wasn't in the know about everything troops were during his 1982-1983 regime, nor did he know at the time about damning Army documents which have been leaked in recent years.

The second witness called by the defense today is Alfred Antonio Kallschmit Luhan, the executive director of FUNDAPI (Foundation to Help Indigenous People). As the internal armed conflict ravaged Ixil communities during Ríos Montt's rule, the Guatemalan state implemented various programs in cooperation with international evangelical Christian groups. Ríos Montt's "Frijoles y Fusiles" (beans and bullets) program was implemented first, then "Techo, Trabajo, and Tortillas" (roofs, work, and tortillas) to rebuild razed villages. These programs were officially overseen by the state organization known as the National Reconstruction Committee (CRN), originally created to rebuild after the 1976 earthquake that devastated Guatemala. But much of the state's programs in the Ixil region during Ríos Montt's rule were driven by FUNDAPI, which was a state-sanctioned NGO operated by evangelical Christian and church groups. Most prominent among them was Ríos Montt's own "El Verbo" evangelical church, which had interesting origins in Eureka, California, and was supported by American evangelical leaders such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, as well as members of the Reagan administration such as Ed Meese III and James Watt.

During Ríos Montt's rule, El Verbo operated an "emergency aid group" known as the International Love Lift, which was supported with funds from evangelical Christian groups in the United States.

Virginia Garrard-Burnet's "Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala Under General Efrain Rios Montt," includes a section detailing FUNDAPI's structure and relationship with the US government and evangelical groups.

The short version: FUNDAPI was formed by El Verbo, and inextricably linked with El Verbo. FUDAPI operated, effectively, as a "humanitarian Christian extension" of the Guatemalan Army under Ríos Montt.

In Thomas R. Melville's "Through a Glass Darkly," this section details how Christian groups in the US organized "Love Lifts" to Guatemala during the armed conflict. They raised millions of dollars and successfully lobbied for support of then-US President Ronald Reagan's policies supporting the Ríos Montt regime.

In his court testimony today, Kaltschmitt argued that the "model villages" in the Chajul/Cotzal/Nebaj area into which Ixiles were forcibly relocated in 1982-1983 were aid camps to help victims of guerrilla aggression. "They weren't concentration camps, that was a hoax invented by who knows who."

"There was so much hunger in the countryside," he added; "Crops were pulled up and destroyed by one side or the other, or stolen, because hunger was so great; this was the greatest sin during the war... The policy of the state was to help and assist the civil population and end the conflict."

"This was the army's best moment," said Kaltschmitt. "History was fixed for the Ixils, the region was pacified." He testified that Ixil people could enter and leave at free will, when they pleased, in contradiction to testimony by witnesses and experts for the prosecution. "It is clear that there was no genocide."

Kaltschmitt further explained that the civil patrols into which Mayan people were forcibly recruited "restored people's dignity."

After Kaltschmitt completed his testimony, something even more interesting happened in court.

The judge called for footage from Pamela Yates "Granito" documentary production to be played in court. Yates directed two films about Guatemala: her first, "When the Mountains Tremble," was released in the mid-1980s and amplified global attention toward Guatemala and Rigoberta Menchu, the film's narrator and central character. Yates' second film, Granito, was released in 2011 and revisits the conflict and the decades-long struggle over justice, reparations, and impunity.

The first video clip presented in court today from Yates' 1982 footage was an interview with General Jose Efrain Rios Montt.

Here in the courtroom, one could feel great tension and excitement as the video began.

On screen, a Guatemalan Army general at the height of his potency and confidence smiled, spoke rapidly, leaned towards the camera at times; his dark brown eyes glistened with conviction and force. Immediately below the screen, a grey-haired 86-year-old man leaned back, silent and expressionless.

They are the same person.

The defense of Ríos Montt in this trial has focused largely on the argument that while he was in power, he could not and did not have control of everything the Army did; he could not know everything that was going on in the remote, rural Ixil region, and cannot be held responsible for any atrocities committed by rogue soldiers.

But the video played in court seemed to contradict this argument.

"If I can't control the Army," 1982 Ríos Montt said on screen, "Then what am I doing here?"

In the interview, he effectively claimed to have total control over the Guatemalan military; they were proudly fighting a just counterinsurgency war against the threat of international Communism that was aided by the USSR, Cuba, and Nicaragua. This subversive Communist menace, he said, said threatened to destroy Guatemala.

In the 1982 footage, Ríos Montt smiles and laughs, punctuating briskly-delivered answers with a wide grin. When annoyed or emphasizing a point, he raises his voice. His posture, voice, and words reflected confidence.

Below that image in the courtroom today, Ríos Montt was not smiling.

Since the trial began on March 19, Ríos Montt has maintained silence during court sessions as an act of protest against what he believes is an unjust trial.

He said in the 1982 interview that behind every one guerrilla, there are 10 guerrilla supporters. "If people go to another country, it's because they have committed crimes," the man on screen says when asked about the thousands of indigenous refugees streaming into Mexico.

"I'll shoot anyone who doesn't turn himself in."

Is there repression against the civilian population, filmmaker Pamela Yates asked him in the film? "There is no repression being committed on the part of the Army," he replies.

As the Ríos Montt footage played, the two defense attorneys at his side appeared bored and tired. By the end of the clip, attorney César Calderón was leaning on the table, head resting on his fists, elbows on the table, periodically massaging his furrowed brow.

“Muchissimas gracias,” Pamela Yates says to Rios Ríos Montt at the end of the 1982 footage playing on-screen in court.

No, thank *you*, Ríos Montt replies to her.

End tape.

The court then screened two more interviews conducted by Yates with two other Guatemalan Army leaders in 1982: General Francisco Luis Gordillo, and Horacio Egberto Maldonado.

"Water is to the fish as people are to the guerrilla," Gordillo said during his interview, echoing a line repeated by a number of military leaders in interviews and public appearances during this era.

"A fish without water dies; a guerrilla without people dies."

And indeed, in the Guatemalan Army's attempt to wipe out the insurgency, many people died.

"The Army is fighting against subversives," Gordillo says on-screen. "Not only domestic subversives but also international subversives."

Yates: "Is it true the Army is attacking people in rural areas?"

Gordillo: "Yes, the Army is attacking the elements of International Communism."

The Gordillo interview ended, and then the court played Yates' 1982 interview with Maldonado.

"The U.S. has proven to be open to our needs," says Maldonaldo, "They are completely willing to collaborate with us."

In this footage, he, Ríos Montt, and Gordillo each emphasized how important the US-provided helicopters were in their fight against "subversives," and how valuable they were in the state-run programs that provided "aid and assistance" to devastated communities.

"The Army is no longer just to be spreading lead in these communities," he says.

"Many priests were guerrillas," Maldonado added in the 1982 footage. "I call them ungrateful. They used the indigenous as cannon fodder."

Towards the end of the clip with Maldonado, Yates asks him if he has any final comments.

"A big brotherly hug to the people and government of the United States, to thank them for their ongoing support, which we need so much now to fight this battle."

Judge Jazmin Barrios ended the court session prematurely today, because Ríos Montt's defense team did not have additional witnesses ready and present to testify. Court will reconvene tomorrow, presumably with more witnesses for the defense. Judge Barrios scolded them for not having more witnesses; you should have a dozen a day, she said. And indeed, it seems odd that the defense isn't doing more to defend.

The sense among people close to the process here is that those in charge want it to end soon. It is possible that the trial will end as early as tomorrow or Thursday; a verdict could be delivered by the end of this week, or next Monday.

(This post was prepared in part with references to live-tweets in the courtroom from @pzPenVivo and @NISGUA_Guate.)

Access Copyright Canada goes on anti-fair-dealing war-path

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:46:59 +0000

Michael Geist sez,

Months after the Supreme Court of Canada delivered a stinging defeat to Canadian copyright collective Access Copyright by ruling for an expansive approach to fair dealing and the government passed copyright reforms that further expanded the scope of fair dealing, Access Copyright responded yesterday with what amounts to a desperate declaration of war against fair dealing. Access Copyright has decided to fight the law - along with governments, educational institutions, teachers, librarians, and taxpayers - on several fronts. Most notably, it has filed a lawsuit against York University over its fair dealing guidelines, which are similar to those adopted by educational institutions across the country. While the lawsuit has yet to be posted online, the Access Copyright release suggests that the suit is not alleging specific instances of infringement, but rather takes issue with guidelines it says are "arbitrary and unsupported" and that "authorize and encourage copying that is not supported by the law."
Most of Access Copyright's longstanding arguments were dismissed by the Supreme Court this past summer. To suggest that a modest fair dealing policy based on Supreme Court jurisprudence and legislative reforms is "arbitrary and unsupported" is more than just rhetoric masquerading as legal argument. It is a declaration of war against fair dealing.

Access Copyright's Desperate Declaration of War Against Fair Dealing

Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research rips off writer, threatens to sue him for plagiarism

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:54:21 +0000

Since at least 2001, Colin Purrington, a former Swarthmore Evolutionary Biology prof, has been publishing a great guide to conference posters that is widely read and linked. It's also widely plagiarized, and Purrington sends notices to people whom he catches passing it off as their own work, asking them to remove it. Normally, this works.

But not in the case of The Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research, Inc., a company that receives millions in federal grants to fund biotech research. When Purrington sent CPBR an email telling them off for plagiarizing him, they responded by accusing him of being the plagiarist, threating him with massive damages, and demanding that he remove his own work immediately and permanently.

Purrington responded with a pretty good note about the whole awful mess. Though I think he overstates the copyright case here. In particular, he discounts out of hand the idea that reproduction in educational contexts can't be fair use; this is just wrong -- fair use is fact intensive, and educational use tilts the scales in favor of a successful defense. On the other hand, plagiarism (though not illegal) is a cardinal sin in education, and educators who pass off his work as their own may not be breaking the law, but they are unambiguously violating a core ethic of education and scholarship.

But back to CPBR. This is not only plagiarism, it's also copyright infringement, and it's copyfraud -- claiming copyright on something you hold no rights to. It's unethical, it's illegal, and it's fraudulent. CPBR president and chairman Dorin Schumaker (also sole employee -- who, according to its most recent 990, receives $213,964 a year) is not available for comment, and both its attorneys and whomever answers its phone hung up on the Chronicle of Higher Ed when called for clarification.

So: crooks and cowards.

I called the main number for the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research and was told that the president and chairman, Dorin Schumaker, was not available and might not be available for weeks. Schumaker is the only paid employee listed on the nonprofit’s most recent available Form 990 tax filing (her salary, according to the filing, is $213,964). I then called a number listed for a Dorin Schumaker in St. Simons Island, Ga., where the consortium is based. The person who picked up the phone declined to answer questions and hung up when asked if she was Dorin Schumaker. The consortium’s lawyer, David Metzger, also hung up on me. In a follow-up e-mail, he said he was abiding by his client’s wishes.
If they can explain how they created, in 2005, a document that Purrington posted online years before, they’re keeping that explanation mum for now.
Too often in plagiarism cases, the victim never really gets satisfaction. Maybe the offending passage is taken down. Perhaps a footnote is added. The plagiarist might even manage a mumbled apology. But the penalties are often piddling. This is the first case I’ve heard of in which the apparent victim may be the one who gets punished.

Purrington also states that he prohibits "paraphrase plagiarism, which is when you copy sentences and phrases but make minor word changes to mask your theft" -- which, again, overstates the scope of copyright. Paraphrasing material, quoting, and transformative adaptation are, in fact, classic fair use, despite Purrington's statement that he's "lost my patience with people claiming that Fair Use allows them to bypass my copyright. Really, folks?" Well, yes, really: fair use is the right to make uses and copies without permission from the copyright holder. It's not without limits, but it's also not nothing. Incidental copying, copying for the purposes of commentary and criticism, format-shifting, archiving, adaptation to assistive formats, etc -- all potentially fair use. Scholarship depends on fair use and other limitations in copyright, and while Purrington's poster is a great and informative work that greatly assists scholarship, his statements about the scope of copyright and its limitations and exceptions are greatly harmful to it.

I applaud the good work he's done in his guide, and am firmly on his side when it comes to the terrible treatment he's gotten at the hands of the CPBR. But I wish he'd check out some of the equally excellent guides to fair use so that all of the information he disseminates was just as accurate and useful as his conference poster piece.

Adding Insult to Plagiary? [Chronicle of Higher Education/Tom Bartlett]

Today, we save the Internet (again): fix the CFAA!

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:49:02 +0000

Read this if you want to stay out of jail.

When my friend Aaron Swartz committed suicide in January, he'd been the subject of a DoJ press-release stating that the Federal prosecutors who had indicted him were planning on imprisoning him for 25 years for violating the terms of service of a site that hosted academic journals. Aaron had downloaded millions of articles from that website, but that wasn't the problem. He was licensed to read all the articles they hosted. The problem was, the way he downloaded the articles violated the terms and conditions of the service. And bizarrely -- even though the website didn't want to press the matter -- the DoJ decided that this was an imprisonable felony, under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes it a crime to "exceed your authorization" on any online service.

The DoJ reasoned that if the law said that doing anything "unauthorized" was a crime, and if the long, gnarly hairball of legalese that no one reads before clicking "I agree" set out what you were allowed to do, then violations of that "agreement" were a felony.

Aaron's death galvanized some Congresscritters to do something about this oversight. The ancient CFAA predated the widespread use of terms of service in everyday activities like hanging out with your friends, reading the newspaper, getting an education or signing up for a dating service. Congress did not intend to create a situation where companies that provided services could put any unreasonable condition they wanted into an "agreement" you might never see ("By using this website, you accept all terms and conditions") and then ask the DoJ to put people in prison for decades if they violated them.

The reform to CFAA was welcome and long overdue. But the DoJ has asked some members of the House Judiciary Committee to make it worse.

Under the amendments, which might be voted on as early as April 10, violating terms of service could be defined as racketeering -- so that you could be prosecuted as though your violation of terms of service made you into a mobster.

They also add "conspiring" to violate terms of service to the list of offenses that are a felony under the CFAA. So you can be thrown in jail just for talking about ways to violate terms of service.

The amendments also make it a felony to obtain information that you are entitled to obtain, if you do so in a way that violates terms of service. My wife and I share some online accounts, including our "family" airmiles account with British Airways, which we both contribute to and use, but only my wife can see the details of them (she signed up for the service, so it's linked to her login). We're both entitled to see those details, but poor service design makes it impossible to do this without sharing a login and password. No problem, except that BA's terms of service forbid this. So looking up my own airmiles, which I earned, and which I'm entitled to see and use, would be a felony under these amendments because I was looking at them in a way that violates BA's terms.

The amendments also include increased powers for seizure of property, which will enable the Feds to take away the assets you might use to defend yourself against a CFAA claim.

This is a trainwreck. It will allow the DoJ to put every single American Internet user in prison at their discretion, because we all violate terms of service every day. For example, Seventeen magazine's terms of service forbid you from visiting its website if you're under eighteen (!), and that means that its 4.5 million underage readers would all be felons under the CFAA, and liable to decades in prison.

The fact that Congress is contemplating this is a testament to its awful authoritarian venality. The fact that they're doing it as part of a reform triggered by Aaron's death is a fucking travesty.

Aaron helped design the widgets that put through 8,000,000 phone calls to Congress about the awfulness of SOPA and killed legislation that everyone on the inside considered unstoppable. Now, Demand Progress -- the group Aaron helped found -- has got another "Tell Congress" widget, which we've embedded for today. You can (and should) embed it too. You can get your own at FixTheCFAA.com, along with a cute tool to put your social media profile photo behind bars and let your friends know what's going on.

Today, we save the Internet. Again.

Demand Justice for Aaron Swartz

Widespread, illegal debtors' prisons in Ohio

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 01:20:04 +0000

A new ACLU report called The Outskirts of Hope (PDF) documents the rise of illegal debtors prisons in Ohio. A majority of municipal and mayors' courts (an unregulated and rare system of courts only permitted in two states) surveyed by the ACLU routinely imprison people for their inability to pay fines, a practice banned in both the US and state constitution. 20 percent of the bookings in the Huron County Jail are "related to failure to pay fines."

Taking care of a fine is straightforward for some Ohioans — having been convicted of a criminal or traffic offense and sentenced to pay a fine, an affluent defendant may simply pay it and go on with his or her life. For Ohio’s poor and working poor, by contrast, an unaffordable fine is just the beginning of a protracted process that may involve contempt charges, mounting fees, arrest warrants, and even jail time. The stark reality is that, in 2013, Ohioans are being repeatedly jailed simply for being too poor to pay fines.
The U.S. Constitution, the Ohio Constitution, and Ohio Revised Code all prohibit debtors’ prisons. The law requires that, before jailing anyone for unpaid fines, courts must determine whether an individual is too poor to pay. Jailing a person who is unable to pay violates the law, and yet municipal courts and mayors’ courts across the state continue this draconian practice. Moreover, debtors’ prisons actually waste taxpayer dollars by arresting and incarcerating people who will simply never be able to pay their fines, which are in any event usually smaller than the amount it costs to arrest and jail them.

The report documents heartbreaking cases, like Samantha Reed and John Bundren, a couple with a nine-month-old who were both ordered to pay fines they can't afford. John diverts whatever seasonal/part time wages he earns to Samantha's fines so she can look after their baby, while he goes to jail for ten-day stretches for failure to make payments. They are effectively indigent, but are not given access to counsel when they appear in court over their debts.

(via Reddit)

Montreal police arrest young woman for instagramming photo of anti-police mural

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 21:57:57 +0000

Jennifer Pawluck, a 20 year old woman from Montreal, was taken into police custody yesterday and questioned after she posted a photo of a graffiti mural on her Instagram. The mural showed a caricature of a Montreal police spokesman called Cmdr. Ian Lafrenière, with a bullet hole in his head.

After she posted the image to Instagram, police came to her house and took her in for questioning, releasing her several hours later. The police say that there are secret reasons they detained her, beyond taking a picture of graffiti and posting it, but they won't say what they are.

Pawluck participated in the mass student demonstrations in Montreal and was part of the ensuing mass arrests. She will have to appear in court on April 17, and is barred from going with a kilometer of police HQ and from communicating with Cmdr Lafrenière. She has not been charged.

Lafrenière is the head of the service's communications division and frequently appeared in the media during the student protests.
Pawluck said that when the picture was taken, she didn’t know who Lafrenière was, but she found the image interesting.
Montreal police confirmed that a young woman was arrested at her home Wednesday and brought to the police station to be questioned by investigators. They did not name Pawluck.

Instagram anti-police pic sharing tied to Montrealer's arrest [CBC]