The Internet Infrastructure Coalition is urging the U.S. Government not to blindly follow the RIAA and MPAA’s input regarding online piracy threats. The group, which represents tech firms including Google, Amazon and Verisign, warns that the future of the Internet is at stake.
Torrentfreak: “MPAA and RIAA’s Anti-Piracy Plans Harm The Internet” »
But what do we do when the same threats aren’t the result of a law or the practices of an individual company, but the result of a private industry agreement? For example, agreements between copyright holders and Internet companies that give copyright holders the ability to effectively delete users’ content from the Internet, and agreements on other topics such as hateful speech and terrorism that can be used to stifle lawful speech. Unlike laws, such agreements (sometimes also called codes, standard, principles, or guidelines) aren’t developed with public input or accountability. As a result, users who are affected by them are often completely unaware that they even exist.
EFF: Shadow Regulation: the Back-Room Threat to Digital Rights »
The European Commission has a new idea – to fight copyright infringements by targeting companies who advertise on file sharing sites. To nobody’s surprise, what the commission suggests is a mess.
EDRi:s Joe McNamee:
It is currently discussing “guiding principles” for withdrawal of services by advertising companies to penalise and prevent “commercial scale” infringements. Tellingly, the final paragraph of the “guiding principles” contains very similar wording to the ill-fated “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” (ACTA) that was rejected in 2012.
Like ACTA, the “guiding principles” include illusory “safeguards”, such as references to non-existent legal terms like “fundamental principles” and “fair process” (not due process). Like ACTA, it refers to “commercial scale”, as if this was a safeguard. The European Commission itself has previously said that the term is too vague in existing law.
The text also refers to a “right to access lawful content”, even though there is no such “right”. We have a right to freedom of movement (not a right to legal movement), we have a right to freedom of communication. The implication of the expression “right to access lawful content” is that everything we do or say should be assumed to be illegal until proven otherwise. This is profoundly objectionable.
Why is it that every time the European Commission address issues like copyright, file sharing and a free and open Internet – they totally loose it?
The commissioners are supposed to be the elite of European bureaucracy and they have top legal advisors. But do they even know what they are doing? Or do they deliberately conspire to deceive the public?
/ HAX
NPR: Record Label Picks Copyright Fight — With The Wrong Guy »
Torrent Freak: EU Commission Proposes Mandatory Piracy Filters For Online Services »
The new iPhones doesn’t have a traditional 3.5 mm audio jack. Some say this is just a natural step in development, like when the computer floppy disks were dropped. But there might be more into it than that.
Nilay Patel in the Verge:
Restricting audio output to a purely digital connection means that music publishers and streaming companies can start to insist on digital copyright enforcement mechanisms. We moved our video systems to HDMI and got HDCP, remember?
Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing:
Once all the audio coming out of an Iphone is digital — once there’s no analog output — Apple gets a lot more options about how it can relate to its competitors, and they’re all good for Apple and bad for Apple’s customers. Just by wrapping that audio in DRM, Apple gets a veto over which of your devices can connect to your phone. They can arbitrarily withhold permission to headphone manufacturers, insist that mixers be designed with no analog outputs, or even demand that any company that makes an Apple-compatible device must not make that device compatible with Apple’s competitors, so home theater components that receive Apple signals could be pressured to lock out Samsung’s signals, or Amazon’s.
Perhaps worst of all is the impact on security research: because the DMCA has been used to attack researchers who disclosed defects in DRM-restricted technologies, they are often unable or unwilling to come forward when they discover serious vulnerabilities in technologies that we rely on. The Iphone audio interface is two-way: it supports both input and output. A bug in that interface turns the phone to carry with you at all times, to all places, into a covert listening device. A DRM system on that interface makes that bug all-but-unreportable, guaranteeing that it will last longer and hurt more people before it finally becomes public.
EFF:
When you plug an audio cable into a smartphone, it just works. It doesn’t matter whether the headphones were made by the same manufacturer as the phone. It doesn’t even matter what you’re trying to do with the audio signal—it works whether the cable is going into a speaker, a mixing board, or a recording device. (…)
In other words, if it’s impossible to connect a speaker or other audio device to an iPhone without Apple software governing it, then it’s simple for Apple to place restrictions on what devices or functions are allowed. Because US law protects DRM technologies, it may be illegal to circumvent that restriction, even if you’re doing it for completely lawful purposes. Having created the possibility of restricting audio output to select devices, Apple will be under pressure to use it. TV and film producers insist on having the power to decide which devices can receive video. Can we really believe they will leave audio alone if outputs become entirely digital?
Links:
• EFF: The End of Headphone Jacks, the Rise of DRM »
• TechDirt: Why Apple Removing The Audio Jack From The iPhone Would Be A Very, Very, Very, Bad Move »
• The Verge: Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid »
• BoingBoing: How a digital-only smartphone opens the door to DRM (and how to close the door) »
The unpleasant practice of sending extortion letters to file sharers / downloaders seems to be spreading. The latest example is Sweden. And it all seems to be loosely built on the German model.
Here are few links describing what’s going on in Germany:
• File Sharing infringements in Germany »
• Germany offers frightening glimpse at copyright trumping privacy »
• Your Digital Rights in Germany »
• Advice on the copyright infringement warning letter from Fareds »
The EU apparatus is back from summer leave, and one of the big issues this coming year will be Copyright Reform.
As I have written before, indications are that the EU Commissions proposal will be lame as well as misguided. This should come as no surprise. The thing is, the system is rigged.
Having worked in the European Parliament, I have learned about the close ties between politicians and the copyright industry.
Big Entertainment and other copyright holders are not interested in real copyright reform. They loathe the Internet and fear the new digital market.
What they want is special legislation. And it doesn’t really have to benefit them directly. They are comfortable with new rules aimed at blocking new competition, like Internet start-ups with new and disrupting business models.
This is crony capitalism, corporatism and the rule of special interests.
The Internet is a unique possibility to develop a really free economy, a free market and competition on a somewhat level playing field. Big Business doesn’t like that. Nor do the politicians and bureaucrats. They are anti-progress.
You should keep that in mind as the battle for EU Copyright Reform begins.
/ HAX
However, after reading the draft IA, our conclusion is that EU policy-makers do not seem to think it is worth the effort to bring copyright to the XXI century. Ignoring the results of the copyright consultation of 2014, and despite not having published the analysis on the results on the public consultation on ancillary copyright and freedom of panorama, the Commission has a plan: Let’s ignore all facts (even those previously identified) and avoid a real reform at all costs.
The EU is to update the unions copyright laws. The first step was a public consultation, with a lot of input from so-called stakeholders, civil society, and ordinary citizens. The next step is to make an “impact assessment”.
Thanks to State Watch, this impact assessment has now been leaked. [Link, PDF»] As far as this document goes, we can expect a rather problematic proposal for a law (a directive or possibly a regulation) late September.
–
For example, the EU Commission seems to be rather keen on the idea of a “link tax” – also known as the “Google tax“.
The idea comes from Spain and Germany where the big media houses managed to lobby trough a fee for links with short snippets from the news material in question. The (rather ill-conceived) idea is that Google News and others linking to articles and other copyright protected material should share their potential revenues with the media they link to.
In Spain, it lead to Google News abandoning the entire Spanish market – resulting in the media having fewer clicks on their articles. And in Germany, many media organisations learned from the Spanish fiasco and have opted out from being a part of this scheme – in order to have a lot of incoming link traffic.
It ought to be obvious to everybody: If you are on the Internet you would like to have as many clicks as possible. Thwarting linking to your own material is just stupid.
As links are the Internets nerve system a link tax will also be a threat to the entire open dynamics of the Internet.
But the EU Commission seems decided to move on with this terrible idea.
–
There has also been a discussion about “fair use”, i.e. the right to use copyright protected material in the public and political debate, in satire, for memes, for sampling etc. There are no indications in this impact assessment that the EU intends to loosen up the copyright regime in this regard.
Only small steps will be taken to relax geoblocking (where you cannot see national television broadcasts on the net in other countries or Netflix if you go on holiday abroad). In essence, there will be no common European digital market.
There might also be new and possibly stricter enforcement of copyright on platforms for user-generated material, like Youtube and Soundcloud. As a consequence, this might make it more difficult for others to compete with existing platforms, as automated systems for copyright enforcement are complicated and very expensive to implement.
–
This impact assessment implies that there will be no substantial copyright reform to move the EU into the 21:st century.
Now it’s up to civil society, Internet freedom activists, advocates for free speech and others to voice their concerns to the EU Commission. (The copyright industry’s and Big Entertainment industry’s lobbyist are already all over the place.)
It is easier to change things now – before they are laid down in a formal proposal for European law.
The next step is for the Commission to table a proposal for a directive (probably in late September). Then it needs to be approved by the Council (member states) and the European Parliament (the people’s elected representatives).
/ HAX
• The EU Commissions leaked impact assessment (PDF) »
• Ars Technica: Google snippet tax, geoblocking, other copyright reform shunned in EU plan »
• EFF: European Copyright Leak Exposes Plans to Force the Internet to Subsidize Publishers »
• The Mozilla Blog: EU Copyright Law Undermines Innovation and Creativity on the Internet. Mozilla is Fighting for Reform »
• Ars Technica: “Google tax” on snippets under serious consideration by European Commission »
