What's Illegal About Using Twitter To Organize Protests?

from the someone-please-explain dept

A bunch of folks have been sending in various versions of the story of a guy (described as an "anarchist") who was allegedly arrested for using social media tools like Twitter to organize protesters at the recent G20 Summit in Pittsburgh. The specific charges are for "hindering prosecution," but it seems like there must be some details missing. All around, the whole thing sounds pretty extreme. What's illegal about organizing protesters?

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The Speed At Which Wrong Information Flows

from the unfortunate dept

If you've been following the news of the protests in Iran over the past few days, you've no doubt heard about the story of Neda Soltani, who was shot and killed on video, and has become, as some news reports have noted, "the face of Iran's struggle." Not to get into the politics of it all, what is quite fascinating is the news that the photo that many individuals and news sources are using for Soltani isn't just of a different Neda Soltani, but it's due to confusion over how Facebook works (found via Mathew Ingram).

Basically, a woman named Amy Beam, who was interested in the Neda Soltani in the video contacted other Neda Soltani's found on Facebook, and one communicated back with her, and eventually they "friended" each other on Facebook. Soon after, the "living" Neda Soltani posted a translation of an article about the killed Neda Soltani on Amy's Facebook "wall." However, the way this works, is that along with the post on the wall, it includes the poster's own avatar/profile photo -- in this case the living Neda Soltani. From that, others who were friends of Amy saw the name Neda Soltani, the story about the killed woman, and the photo of the living woman -- and assumed they were all the same woman... and from there the photo started spreading like wildfire, including websites, TV, banners and elsewhere. And the really scary part is that the living Neda Soltani is now quite afraid for her life, since she's suddenly become "the face of the face of the struggle in Iran" despite not being the woman who was shot.

Certainly, bad information flows at incredible speed in this day and age, but the series of events and confusion that led to this result is quite fascinating, if a bit scary (especially for the living Neda Soltani). There's an effort under way to alert everyone using the wrong photo to change their images, but you have to wonder how effective that will be.

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Another Bogus Copyright Takedown: Can't Protest A Viacom Movie With T-Shirts

from the where's-the-infringement? dept

Boing Boing points us to the news that someone who was trying to protest the fact that a new Viacom animated movie was hiring Caucasian actors to play Asian or Inuit characters found that the t-shirts she was selling via Zazzle were taken down due to a claim that they violated Viacom's intellectual property. It's difficult to see what the violation of intellectual property here is. The shirts don't use any imagery from the movie itself. The t-shirts were designed by the woman herself. The only thing they have is a mention of the name of the movie -- but that shouldn't be enough to force the content offline. On top of that, plenty of the shirts don't seem to name the movie at all, but do name one of the characters. Again, it's quite difficult to see how this is an intellectual property violation, in any way. The explanation that Zazzle gave isn't entirely clear -- as it might not be a case of Viacom complaining directly, but Zazzle taking the matter into its own hands (which is equally troubling). Whether it's Viacom or Zazzle, this appears to be an overly aggressive attempt to stop perfectly reasonable public speech by hiding behind intellectual property claims. Update: Someone from Viacom stopped by in the comments to let us know that it has no problem with the shirts. Zazzle just took the shirts down on their own, and Viacom has asked them to put the shirts back up. Nice to see Viacom respond in this manner.

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New Zealand Dumps 3 Strikes Plan... For Now

from the about-time dept

After temporarily backing down from the controversial 3 strikes provision that was put into a bill in a sneaky way (after it had been rejected by legislators, the country's copyright minister simply added it back in), it looks like New Zealand has decided to start again completely. Officials in New Zealand note that no agreement was reached in the month allotted to work out a new plan, so they're going to scrap the entire provision -- and look to start over from scratch with no specific timeline in place. Hopefully, this means that when it comes to a new law, the considerations of all parties will be considered, rather than just those of the entertainment industry.

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Recording Industry, Politicians Continue To Give Bogus Reasons To Support 3 Strikes In New Zealand

from the doesn't-anyone-call-them-on-this-crap? dept

Lawrence D'Oliveiro continues to keep us informed on the more ridiculous aspects of the push by both the recording industry and certain politicians in New Zealand to push through that country's highly controversial policy to cut off file sharers based on accusations rather than actual convictions for file sharing. First up is that the country's Prime Minister appears to be flat-out lying when he claims that New Zealand has to implement such a plan to remain in compliance with international obligations. That's simply not true. He claims that other countries, like Australia and the UK have already implemented similar plans, but that's also not true. Both countries have considered such a plan, but the UK, for instance, has already said that it will not require ISPs to cut anyone off the internet. To claim that New Zealand has to do so or that other countries have already agreed to the same thing is simply untrue.

Even more disturbing, though, is how the recording industry is pushing back against complaints from ISPs in the ongoing "negotiations" around this bill. Computerworld New Zealand has a leaked memo from the RIANZ, the RIAA's New Zealand wing. In it, the industry complains that it's not reasonable to allow those accused of file sharing to have more than five days to file a counter-notice to fight back against bogus accusations of file sharing. The RIANZ whines that this would allow file sharers to prevent being cut off from the internet. It makes it clear that it thinks the process from notification to getting cut off should be as short as is possible. Apparently, the recording industry isn't a fan of due process.

Then, apparently with a straight face, the RIANZ claims that the evidence it presents to ISPs is "highly reliable, well-tested and accepted worldwide." Tell that to all of the folks who have been falsely accused of file sharing because the evidence is not reliable, not well-tested and hardly accepted worldwide (in fact, US courts have increasingly questioned the weak evidence presented by the industry). The RIANZ also seems to claim that the three strikes policy is a "standard followed in other countries." That sounds nice, aside from the fact that no countries have actually approved such a law. Oh, right, also the RIANZ is upset that ISPs think that it should have to pay the costs associated with sending these notices. So, the recording industry doesn't want to pay the costs, doesn't want to give users much time to respond and is lying about what other countries are doing and the quality of its evidence. And New Zealand politicians are buying it.

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New Zealand Temporarily Backs Down From Controversial Copyright Law

from the let's-see-what-happens-next dept

It looks like the widespread protests against New Zealand's awful copyright law have finally made government officials recognize that something is wrong. They've agreed to delay the implementation of the new law for up to a month -- as the government is hoping that ISPs can come up with a "code of practice" to help deal with copyright infringement online. What's not explained (at all) is why this should somehow be the ISPs responsibility at all. Still, it's good to see that New Zealand politicians are finally recognizing that this is an important issue, and they can't just claim it was a few geeks who were concerned about it.

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New Zealand Gov't Refuses To Remove 'Guilt Upon Accusation' Clause In Copyright Act

from the bad-law dept

Recently, New Zealand passed a copyright law similar to ones being pushed elsewhere by the entertainment industry, that would require accused file sharers to be cut off from their internet connection, based on the accusation alone. This seems to go against any concept of due process, and even musicians (who this law was supposed to help) came out against it loudly. Unfortunately, the politicians who put the law in place clearly had their minds already made up, and are refusing to change the law, which will go into effect in just a few weeks. Apparently, they want to see how it works in action, before making a decision on whether to change it -- which I'm sure will be quite comforting to those who lose their internet access without any proof or conviction of unauthorized file sharing.

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Musicians In New Zealand Protesting 'Guilt Upon Accusation' Plan

from the good-for-them dept

One of the biggest problems with various "three strikes" or "graduated response" plans that involve ISPs slowing, degrading or removing internet connections from those accused of file sharing is the fact that they're based on accusations of file sharing, rather than actual proof and conviction. One of the most draconian of such plans has shown up in New Zealand, where the country's copyright minister yelled at those who pointed out how problematic the law was -- insisting that ISPs need to be responsible for stopping file sharing. Of course, many musicians recognize how problematic this is as well, and a bunch of them are getting together to protest the law in New Zealand, pointing out that "guilt upon accusation" is a horrible policy, and, even as musicians, they don't want such actions to be taken in their name.

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Latest Australian Internet Censorship Campaign Begins To Widespread Protests

from the free-the-internet dept

The latest in a long line of attempts by the Australian government to censor the internet is now starting, as ISPs are beginning to filter the internet (sometimes under protest), agreeing to block access to sites on a government blacklist. This plan will cost Austrlian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, on top of the large amounts already spent on earlier plans that failed.

In response to the start of the new filtering, Australian citizens are taking to the streets in protest, though it's unclear how much of an impact that will have. Once these "trials" fail, with both false positives and false negatives, maybe, just maybe someone in power down under will recognize that censorship is just a bad idea.

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Korea Using Copyright Law To Crack Down On Protests It Doesn't Like?

from the misuse-of-copyright-law dept

Copyright law, by its nature, is an abuse of free speech. Many, of course, consider it to be a reasonable restriction on free speech -- but any time you open that door, you open up the possibility that copyright will be abused in a way to prevent other types of free speech. For example, Techdirt reader cram writes in to point out that Korean officials have arrested the CEO of a video streaming website, charging him with copyright infringement, noting that the site encouraged people to upload copyrighted works by giving uploaders a share of money earned. However, many are suggesting that copyright infringement charges have little to do with the real reason behind the arrest -- as the guy arrested also runs another site that has helped publicize videos protesting Korean policies on importing US beef. Well, no matter what they think of imports on US beef, now they know what happens when they import US-mandated copyright law.

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New York City Subpoenas TXTmob For All Text Messages Sent At Republican Convention

from the seems-a-bit-extreme dept

Over the last few years, with the growing recognition of the concept of "flash mobs" or "smart mobs" it's no surprise that various tools have been created to help manage large crowds of diverse individuals who converge for a single purpose. One of those was a project called TXTmob, which was widely used in 2004 by people protesting the Republican National Convention in New York City. Lots of folks used the service to send out group messages to others participating, and to quickly organize and disperse as necessary. As you may recall, there were some confrontations between protesters and the police, resulting in a bunch of arrests. Many of those arrested claim that the arrests were unfair, and have sued the city. As part of its defense, lawyers for New York City have now sent a broad subpoena to the guy who created and ran TXTmob demanding, among other things, many of the text messages sent via the service, including the identities of the senders and recipients. Needless to say, this seems like an overly broad request -- and Tad Hirsch, the MIT PhD. student who set up the service, claims that much of that information no longer exists. Even if it did exist, it seems to be overstepping privacy bounds to demand that Hirsch hand over such information, especially without any specifics included. The whole thing smacks of using subpoenas to intimidate people.

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Videos Of Tibetan Protest Get YouTube Banned In China

from the onto-the-list-it-goes dept

We can now add China to the axis of NoTube as it has blocked all of YouTube after videos from news reports concerning the protests in Tibet began to show up on the video hosting site. What's interesting is that this comes just a few months after new rules went into place in China, demanding that all video hosting sites be approved by the government (and also be state-owned or controlled). However, given the uproar from a number of local video hosting sites, the government decided to ignore its own rules for the time being. However, given the itchy trigger finger on taking down any site or content that the government deems questionable, it's no surprise that this has happened again.

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Old Fogeyism Isn't That Surprising

from the kids-these-days dept

Last week Thomas Friedman penned a silly column claiming that Internet-based activism doesn't "count" as real political engagement. "Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual," he says. As various people have pointed out, this is complete nonsense. I engaged in some campus activism in college in the late 1990s, and I have trouble even imagining how students coordinated their activities in the pre-email days. Blogs have proven an incredibly potent force for rooting out and publicizing injustice. And I'm sure the technologies that have evolved since I graduated are just as valuable to campus activists. Obviously, online activism by itself doesn't accomplish anything, but by the same token neither do telephone calls or newspaper columns. Rather, these are all tools that activists can use to coordinate their activities more efficiently. Many of the people who sign up for candidates' Facebook groups do go to the candidates' rallies or volunteer for their campaigns.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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