Is Apple Suggesting That The DMCA Prevents Terrorism?

from the yeah,-that's-believable dept

The EFF is trying to get a DMCA exemption from the Library of Congress for people who jailbreak their iPhones (if history is any indication, this won't happen -- the Library of Congress never seems to care about consumer rights). However, Apple's response to the Library of Congress, suggesting that open or jailbroken iPhones could be used by terrorists to bring down cell towers is both preposterous and totally unrelated to the issue at hand. First it's preposterous, as there are plenty of "open" devices out there already, and there has yet to be a single report of anyone taking down a cell tower with their mobile phone.

But, much more to the point: the point of copyright is not to protect us from terrorists taking down cell towers. If we, as a country, are relying on the DMCA to protect us from terrorists who don't want us making phone calls, we've got bigger problems. Even if it were true that terrorists could take down cell towers with an open mobile phone, does anyone actually think they'd shy away from doing so because it violated the DMCA? It's not like that's going to make much of a difference at all. It's entirely meaningless to the question of whether or not legal buyers of a mobile device should have the right to place whatever legal software they want on the device.

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Australian Press Prints Movie Industry Myths About Piracy Funding Terrorism

from the does-skepticism-exist-down-under? dept

Isn't the press supposed to actually investigate claims handed to them by industry lobbyists? Apparently not. A bunch of folks have sent in the fact that the Sydney Morning Herald has published a totally one-side and unsubstantiated article claiming that "movie pirates fund terrorism." There are just a few problems with this -- including the fact that the so-called evidence for this is weak or non-existent, and the only evidence that is provided comes directly from the movie industry itself, who has every incentive to push this ridiculous story, despite the fact that the movie business continues to have record breaking years at the box office, and attendance is way up this year so far -- despite a massive worldwide recession.

None of that makes it into this article, by two supposedly professional reporters.

Instead, we're told that "piracy" costs the Australian movie industry $233 million per year and "affects at least 50,000 workers." Affects how? That we're not told. As for the $233 million number, that comes from AFACT -- the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft, hardly an unbiased party, though the gullible reporters seem to take its spokesperson's words as gospel that cannot be questioned. About the only thing that said spokesperson, Neil Gane, can show as someone being impacted is that "the people who own the local DVD shop who are having to lay off staff." Uh huh. And the people who own the local CD shop are doing so also -- but it's not because of "piracy" but because of competition. You know who's staffing up, though? Apple stores and video game retailers... Hmmm... Why is it that AFACT doesn't count their job growth in its numbers? I wonder...

Then there's the claim from the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance's director, Simon Whipp, claiming that all this piracy is impacting the least well paid people in the industry: "We're talking about a group of people who earn an average wage of about $15,000 a year." Honestly, all I can think is that (1) why is the industry paying people such crappy wages and (2) they're probably a lot better off in other jobs then, where they might earn a bit more. I don't see that as a problem of piracy. It seems like the movie studios aren't paying those employees enough to keep them in their jobs.

From there, the article moves on to the absolutely ridiculous, promising to "show how movie piracy is being used to fund terrorist groups including Hezbollah and Jemaah Islamiah, responsible for the Bali bombings in 2002." That would, indeed, be quite interesting, but the article fails to even come close. Instead, it talks about a guy in Sydney who camcorded some films and uploaded them to one of many online groups. What the article doesn't mention is that the same films were almost certainly uploaded by numerous other people, and there's a good chance that most of those films pretty quickly had official (non-camcorded) versions leaked online by industry insiders. But, wait, we're supposed to be learning how this one guy's movies are connected to terrorists.

But, we don't. Instead, we find out that the movies he recorded (but no mention as to whether it's specifically his recordings) showed up in Britain, the United States, Mexico, Spain, Malaysia and the Philippines. We're told that the movies are manufactured and sold in the streets. That's great, but it ignores the fact that, thanks to all this "online movie piracy" the whole "counterfeit DVD" business has been going downhill. In fact, if you must connect the sale of counterfeit DVDs to terrorists, then you should be happy for online piracy taking away that market.

Is any of this suggested in the article? Of course not.

But wait, weren't we supposed to be finding the elusive missing link between movie downloading and terrorism? We were following the camcorded movie recorded by the one guy in Sydney, which showed up in other places... but there the trail ends cold. Instead, we're told to just trust the experts. Ganes (quoted earlier) shows up again to claim: "It has been recognised by governments... that there is a link between movie piracy and terrorist funding." Oh really? It has been recognized by whom? Only by a study funded by the MPAA which didn't really talk about online piracy, but about counterfeiting, and which had numerous methodological problems. At least the article admits that the study was funded by the MPAA, but never considers that it may be biased because of this.

The article quotes the authors of the study, claiming: "If you buy pirated DVDs, there is a good chance that at least part of the money will go to organised crime." Of course, organized crime is not the same as terrorists, but does the article mention that? Nope. It wants you to assume they're the same thing. It also doesn't discuss the declining sales of counterfeit DVDs.

But it does jump back to the Philippines, where local actor Eduardo Manzano has the definitive proof of the link to terrorists. It's because he says so! "In this country, we have the triad, and we have terrorist organisations which are being suspected now of using profits derived from DVDs for possible terrorist activities." Then, in dramatic fashion, the reporters discuss a raid on counterfeit DVDs, and from there we're told that the guy who camcorded movies in Sydney didn't get a big enough sentence.

Got it? With some gullible reporters, a lack of fact checking, questionable information, a lack of context, a total dearth of anyone who might question the bogus information put forth in the article, we have an article promising to show the link between piracy and terrorism that does nothing of the sort. Now who's out there complaining again about how these professional reporters need to have special protection since they actually do real investigative reporting?

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Unblurred Google Satellite Images Is The Equivalent Of Yelling Fire?

from the say-what-now? dept

Earlier this month, we wrote about how a politician in California, Assemblyman Joel Anderson, was looking to force Google and other providers of online mapping/satellite offerings to blur images of schools, churches and government buildings. News.com ran an interview with Anderson, where he attempts to defend his proposed legislation as a matter of public safety. He claims that there is no good reason why anyone would need to clearly see these buildings online, and that it can only be used for bad purposes:

Who wants to know that level of detail? Bad people do.

Apparently, Anderson is the final determiner of what good people do and what bad people do with online maps. Then, when pushed on the fact that forcing companies to blur images of public locations might not pass constitutional muster, Anderson claimed that it was the equivalent of yelling fire:

But since when do you have a First Amendment right to yell fire? This falls under the same category.

I'm curious how that's anywhere near the same category. One is deceiving a bunch of people with an alarming false statement, where the resulting response can put people in danger -- and the other is an accurate representation of a building. Am I missing something?

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A Tale Of Two Studies On File Sharing...

from the guess-who-paid-for-the-terrorism-one? dept

I've recently come across two separate studies concerning file sharing -- that seem to come to vastly different conclusions. The first, as pointed out by Michael Scott, is a very long (128 pages), but very thorough research report analyzing pretty much everything having to do with file sharing in the Netherlands, commissioned by the government. It studies the economic angles, the legal angles, the cultural angles -- and then compares the local results to international results. While you might quibble with some of the methodology here or there, the overall conclusions of the report are pretty strong and clear: file sharing is not a problem for the overall industry. File sharing has, in fact, created a net benefit to the economy and society in both the short and long term, and that will likely continue. The direct impact on sales of file sharing is minimal (though it depends on the category). In fact, the only areas actually in trouble right now may be the sale of plastic discs (CDs and DVDs), but much of the damage has nothing to do with file sharing, and there are indications that the "lost" money can be made up in other ways. The report recommends moving away from criminalizing user activities, and focusing instead on encouraging new business model development. A quick excerpt from the conclusions:

The short-term net welfare effects of file sharing are strongly positive given that it is practised by consumers whose demand is driven by a lack of purchasing power. To the extent that file sharing results in a decline in sales, we see a transfer of welfare from operators/producers to consumers, with no net welfare effect.

The market for CDs and the market for DVD/VHS rentals are the only sectors of the entertainment industry that are suffering from a slump in sales. Whereas this may be attributed in part to file-sharing activity, file sharing is not solely to blame for the decline. The markets for DVDs and console games continued grow impressively after P2P services were introduced, and the cinema market showed sustained growth between 1999 and 2007. The total entertainment market has remained more or less constant, suggesting budget competition among the various products.

As long as the markets for games and films are on the rise or remain stable, there is little reason for concern that the diversity and accessibility of content is at stake. File sharing has significantly enhanced access to a wide and diverse range of products, albeit that access tends not to have the approval of the copyright holders.

In other words, pretty much everything that plenty of folks around here have been saying for a better part of a decade is pretty much true. File sharing isn't damaging -- and, in fact, can represent a net economic improvement, and the business troubles faced by a few small parts of the industry are really business model challenges, rather than legal ones. The report makes it clear that focusing on legal solutions to dealing with file sharing is a big mistake that tends to only backfire and seems to be totally misdirected.

So, what's the other study? It's also quite long, but is full of fear mongering about piracy. It just so happens to be funded by the movie studios claiming that piracy is helping to promote terrorism -- and because of that, the US government needs to devote stunning levels of new resources to stopping piracy at all costs. So what does this report recommend?

• Fully funding and implementing the PRO-IP Act (PL 110-403), which toughens civil and criminal laws against counterfeiting and piracy, provides enhanced IP enforcement and prosecutorial resources, and improves IP coordination within the executive branch.
• Supporting the introduction, passage and enactment of a Customs and Border Protection Reauthorization bill to better address trafficking in illicit goods.
• Supporting the Baucus-Hatch legislative improvements to the USTR's Special 301 process to help deal with other countries that fail to live up to their international IP obligations.
• Concluding negotiations for a substantive and enforceable Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) with major trading partners.
• Pursuing trade agreements with strong global IP protections.
• Expanding U.S. leadership on IP protection within the G8, the Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America, and other bilateral and multilateral frameworks.
• Building coalitions in favor of strong IP protections at international organizations, such as the World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, and U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
• Engaging Beijing to improve China's IP legal and regulatory regimes through the implementation of new patent, trademark and copyright laws.
• Pursuing reforms on data exclusivity, incremental innovation and optical discs legislation in India.
• Working towards improved retail and copyright enforcement in Russia, as well as the successful implementation of IP reform through Part IV of its Civil Code. 

Which of the two reports is more credible? Which do you think will have more impact on government policy in the next year or so? The answers to both questions are unfortunately obvious and extremely disappointing.

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No, In-Flight Internet Is Not A Terrorist Threat

from the panic-stations! dept

The New York Times noticed over the weekend that some US airlines have begun offering in-flight WiFi, and that not everybody's happy about it (via Wolfe's Den ). There are the usual comments about passengers being annoying by making loud VoIP calls or not turning down the volume on YouTube videos, but inserted in is the unchallenged statement from a flight attendants' union spokesman saying it fears "terrorists plotting a scheme on a plane could use Wi-Fi to communicate with one another on board and with conspirators on the ground." As Glenn Fleishman points out, this is only slightly ridiculous. If you're a terrorist, you're hardly likely to se a ban on in-flight phone use as an impediment to communications, while the airplane's WiFi system doesn't enable any on-board communication that wouldn't be possible with other technologies like Bluetooth, or even ad-hoc WiFi networks. There are plenty of more legitimate reasons to dislike in-flight WiFi, but the suggestion that it's making planes unsafe is a fairly hollow one.

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

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US Government Admits: Data Mining For Terrorists Doesn't Work

from the oops dept

Over the last few years, you probably have noticed multiple attempts by state and federal government agencies to collect more data on people and to share that data more widely. This is troubling for a variety of reasons, often having to do with privacy and questions concerning the quality of data, but those concerns are almost always pushed aside by claims that this data is necessary for fighting terrorism. There's this myth out there that if we just had more data, somehow we'd be able to stop terrorists. The problem is that this is untrue. More data often makes it even harder to find the important data, and now a detailed government report has basically confirmed that data mining doesn't help in finding terrorists.

The report was put together by a bunch of well-respected academics, industry insiders and law enforcement officials on behalf of the National Research Council, and finds that the idea of plugging all this data into a machine and popping out terrorist identities is a myth. The report then lists out a variety of recommendations, concerning the use of any data mining systems, and how to make sure that individual privacy is protected. One key finding that will never be implemented: when using any such system, systematic reviews should be done to see if the systems are actually effective. If there's one thing we've seen with government programs over the years, such attempts to actually review something they've put in place to see if it actually worked are almost never done.

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YouTube Bans Terrorism Videos; Don't You Feel Much Safer?

from the I-know-I-don't dept

Back in May we wrote about Senator Joseph Lieberman demanding that YouTube remove a bunch of videos of terrorists. At the time, YouTube reviewed the videos in question, and took down the ones that violated the site's terms of service, but left most of them up, noting that the ones they left up did not promote hate speech nor show violence. As we pointed out at the time, trying to ban terrorists from posting videos to YouTube seems incredibly short-sighted. First, it won't work. Those videos will quickly pop back up on other sites that won't take them down. Second, most of those videos are preaching to the choir. It's unlikely that very many people are being recruited to the terrorists' causes by a grainy video on YouTube. Third, letting terrorists post their videos to a mainstream site like YouTube should help authorities figure out who's posting the videos and where they're coming from. Fourth, and most important, one of the key founding principles of this country is the right to free speech, no matter how much one might disagree with that speech. But, part of that principle is that it allows people to respond. So, yes, the videos may be pure propaganda, but there's no reason that people can't respond to the videos and show why they're propaganda and wrong. Confronting your critics is a reasonable stance. Demanding that they cannot speak is not.

Yet, a bunch of folks have been sending in links to a story claiming that Google has now caved to Sen. Lieberman, and will now ban terrorist videos on YouTube. The article says that YouTube's new terms of service will ban footage that "advertises" terrorism or "extremist causes," which seems pretty broad, and certainly open to abuse. The article describes some videos that show how to commit violent acts -- but those were already banned by YouTube, so that's rather misleading. These new terms are more disturbing. It's not going to stop the videos, it's just going to make it harder to keep track of them, harder to counter them -- all while making the terrorists feel more legitimate.

Terrorists should be tracked down and stopped -- absolutely. But we should be dealing with the actual problem of terrorists, not some videos they made.

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Adapting To A Market Change Is Not The Same As Killing People

from the equivalencies dept

What is it with people trying to equate changing markets to terrorism these days? First we had Andrew Keen trying to equate file sharing to the September 11th hijackers, and now Adam Thierer points us to Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post comparing Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell to a domestic terrorist from 1910 who set a bomb at the LA Times building, killing 21 employees. On what basis does Meyerson make this comparison? Because Zell recognizes that the traditional way the newspaper business worked isn't cutting it any more, and he's out to make changes. Some of those changes do involve cuts -- but if that's what it takes to survive (and thrive), then that's hardly the same as killing people. If Zell simply stays the course, and pretends that the old newspaper business model isn't going away, then he runs a much bigger risk: having the entire Tribune Co. fail. I would think that having him make some cuts here and there to adjust would be better than shutting down the whole damn thing -- and both of those scenarios are light-years better/different than killing people.

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Attorney General Mukasy Claims Piracy Funds Terrorism

from the oh-please dept

We had assumed that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' sudden facsination with "piracy" was as a way to avoid dealing with the controversy surrounding his office -- but it appears his successor is heading down that path as well. In a speech given today in Silicon Valley, Attorney General Michael Mukasey gave a fear mongering speech about how piracy and counterfeiting fosters terrorism. This is a line (literally) straight from the RIAA training manual, which it appears Mukasey has bought into. It should come as no surprise to hear that Mukasey flew up to Silicon Valley after spending a day in Hollywood at Warner Brothers.

Still, what's most interesting is that he doesn't seem to indicate much of a difference between merely copying content and "counterfeiting," which would be passing off a fake good as a legitimate one. Counterfeiting is more akin to "trademark" in that it's really about customer protection (making sure you're not buying Bob's Cola thinking that it's Coca Cola). It's understandable to be upset about counterfeiting -- but the problem is that two separate impartial government agencies have both found that counterfeiting isn't that big a problem, and it's regularly exaggerated by lobbyists.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that any of these nuances have made it to the AG's office. Instead, he's just lumped all piracy and counterfeiting issues into one single category and labeled it all a big problem and linked it to "terrorism" so that no one questions it. And rather than assigning more Justice Department officials to work on real problems and real crimes, he's been beefing up the "IP" group, increasing prosecutions 33% in the last couple of years. Is this really the best use of our taxpayer money?

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Flying Security: Shackle All Passengers With Tazer-Like Bracelets

from the coffee,-tea-or-bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt dept

And we were just talking about how the expected boom in air travel security technology never materialized, and along comes Bruce Schneier to point out a patent on a bracelet that passengers would be forced to wear, which could provide a debilitating shock at the decision of a crew member. And, yes, there's a company trying to commercialize this idea. I'm sure absolutely nothing might go wrong by strapping up all passengers with a potentially debilitating shock. Nothing at all...

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Government Continues To Search Virtual Worlds For Terrorists

from the anyone-look-on-America's-Army? dept

A few weeks back, we pointed to a ridiculous report from the federal government's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, claiming that places like Second Life could be breeding grounds for terrorists. Why Second Life as opposed to any standard web chat room? That's not at all clear. Salon has gone through and thoroughly debunked the notion that terrorists are likely to use Second Life, noting that the so-called "experts" who made the claims clearly had never used Second Life. Yet, don't think that means the government won't keep up its fear-mongering over the issue. Wired is reporting that the U.S. intelligence community is working on software to detect terrorists infiltrating World of Warcraft. Initially, the program will focus on just profiling the behavior of people in such virtual worlds, but down the road they hope that it will automatically identify those likely to be terrorists. I wonder if they'll use similar programs in the Army's own America's Army online video game?

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Gov't Says Second Life + Online Anonymity = Terrorism

from the oh-really? dept

Just as our courts on continually pointing out that anonymity is protected free speech, it appears that the federal government is trying to do away with anonymity entirely. We've already pointed out that National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell has been saying that the government should be able to monitor all internet communications. Now, the government's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity has come out with a fear mongering report trying to suggest that online anonymity in 3D worlds leads to terrorism. It highlights things like Second Life as a breeding ground for terrorism. It's all quite scary if it weren't for the fact that it's totally baseless. There's no evidence at all that this kind of activity is happening in world's like Second Life. In fact, the report buries a quote from an anonymous (ha!) intelligence official admitting that there's no evidence whatsoever that any such activity is happening at all. As the EFF points out in the link above, private communications online are nothing new. The fact that they might take place in a 3D virtual is totally meaningless -- other than to suggest that there are folks involved in national "intelligence" who aren't that intelligent at all.

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DoublePlusUngood Legislation?

from the thoughtcrimes-or-boondoggles? dept

As Slate's Dahlia Lithwick aptly observes, the largely neglected "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007," which passed by an overwhelming margin in the House and will now be taken up by the Senate, seems to have provoked two types of reactions among those who've noticed it: Half think it's a pointless, redundant boondoggle, the other half think it's a first step toward an Orwellian War on Thoughtcrime. The stated purpose of the bill is to try to come up with ways to stop "radicalized thought" from turning into terrorist action -- but that's pretty open ended.

After a cursory read of the bill itself, I tend toward the former interpretation: The law, which would establish a commission to study the causes of "ideologically based violence," evokes MiniLuv less readily than it does Tom Chapin's satirical folk song "A Study's About to Begin." And, indeed, the government has already conducted ample research [PDF] on the psychology and sociology of terrorism. Still, it's not hard to see why civil libertarians get uneasy when the bill's sponsor, California Democrat Jane Harman, is prone to talk about formulating plans "to intervene before a person crosses that line separating radical views from violent behavior," which, presumably, means "intervening" while the person is still only holding radical views. Nor is it especially comforting to reflect on the bill's "finding" that "The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States," which suggests a mandate to focus on offensive online speech. Precisely because the bill is redundant, it seems more useful to worry about the actual steps law enforcement agencies take in service of "prevention." Depending on the composition of any commission convened under the law, there's a fair chance it will produce, if not a boot stamping on a human face forever, then at least a generous helping of national security FUD.

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

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Piracy Is Like Terrorism?

from the well,-not-exactly dept

Tom Lee (no relation) has a fascinating post comparing the entertainment industry's efforts to fight online piracy with the US government's attempts to disrupt terrorist planning on the Internet. I should hasten to make clear that Tom's not saying that piracy's as bad as terrorism, or anything like that, but rather he's pointing to some striking parallels between the organization of the two types of communities online. He links to a wonderful article that we linked to a few years ago that describes the "topsites" that are the source of most of the pirated material online. Tom notes that in both piracy and terrorist networks consist of "an ecosystem of poseurs, parasites and a very few elite operators who can provide the original content that powers the scene. These individuals arrange and rearrange themselves into groups that compete for prestige." There are a few interesting lessons to be drawn from the analogy. Apparently, the tactics the government has been using against these sites, "Monitoring, poisoning, honeypots, and takedowns," are strikingly similar to the methods the recording industry has used against file sharers, and the efforts have been similarly limited. Of course, the big difference is that terrorism is a much more serious crime than piracy, so it's worth expending more resources to hamper it even if the impact is limited. But in both cases, the ultimate solution will only come when we figure out how to solve the more fundamental underlying causes that are fueling the online activity. In the case of the piracy, that will mean finding business models that can fairly compensate artists without treating customers like criminals. In the case of terrorism, it means figuring out how to change conditions in the Middle East so that it's no longer such a breeding ground for terrorists. Until those more fundamental problems are dealt with, no amount of online policing is going to stop the illicit activities.

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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