Content and implicit threats

I'm reading "consent of the Networked" right now. The book is about digital rights, privacy, government and the internet. Once i finish I will write a review for the Urban Times. I found out about the book through TechDirt's book club. One of the major points the author makes about repressive regimes is the activities of pronationalist actors that are not truly part of the government.

These actors are typically regular people and act as hackers, journalists or progovernment rally organizers. They are found in many countries including China, Iran, the former regime of Tunisia and Libya. In a way these groups are a counter weight to "organizations" like Anonymous, dissent groups and the "liberal" media. However, these organizations are unlikely in the US and Europe right?

Well according to the author now. These groups do exist in the US and in some cases are formal business like HBGary. Some of them actually work for the US government and others do with a wink and a nod. These groups help monitor internet users and potential members of groups like Anon. In many cases this extends the impression of continual  observation by the government and other actors, which can lead to self censorship and self selection for activities.

Has this happened to me? You bet it has, but I didn't really think much of it at the time or how it could really impact me. One of the times happened during a Facebook conversation about Wikileaks, which I was supporting. The person I was discussing doesn't like me much and thinks I'm "a rube." He suggested that I should get a job which requires security clearance so I would get an understanding of how things actually work and that I was niave. Of course I disagree with the fact that I'm niave and I view the world in a much more complex manner than his black and white view. However, I had been thinking of applying to a government type position and he told me I should be careful what I say, which he is correct. This then led me to rein in my views and self censor. This had serious implications on how I discussed topics for some time.

The other times are slightly different and after I started blogging. For one my brother is in the Boarder Patrol which gives him clearance and my sister does stuff she can't talk about. So, to some extent, I don't want to negatively impact their ability to work either. This does have a moderating affect as well.

The final source was actually my dad writing to me about my post about anonymous and my discussion of using DDoS as potentially a source of public demonstration on the internet. I was not surprised that he suggested I be careful, he did retire as a Major in the Army Reserves. However, when responding I told him I was already being careful with my wording due to self censorship. I already expect that I'm likely to have my material spring up on someone's radar due to the content I write about. So, I do try to be careful.

In a democracy where these threats should be minimized we have to worry about it. Why should the rest of the world be different or any less oppressive?

Average people suffering from copyright laws

Ars Technica published a brief article about the woes of an average legal MegaUpload user suffering because he cannot access his legal content. At the same time Techdirt, points out that there are several large companies (NBC) and prominent politicians (Lamar Smith) using copyrighted material and will likely not receive any sort of punishment for these infringements.

This isn't exactly the most surprising turn of events. Most of these companies will likely settle or just open up their large portfolios of copyrighted material to Apple or whomever and strike a deal. As users we typically don't have the same rights and are expected to give up our rights when we use services.

In many cases the content that users generate are the value of the website or service that is being used. This network externality comes from other people using and building the network for the site. I like to argue that perceived value of the iOS and Android operating system aren't the systems themselves or the hardware they are on or the cellular network, but rather the applications that are available within these environments. For example look at the problem that Nokia and Microsoft are experiencing with their phones and application stores. The quality of the OS is second to the application environment. Nokia's N-9 that would have used their Meego OS appeared to be an amazing piece of machinery, but it was killed before it ever got a chance. Mostly because Nokia didn't think that it alone could build the application environment needed to make the product a success.

In the case of user created content, the user's rights typically are minimal and likely to be changed at any time. I think part of the reason we consent to these agreements is through ignorance. We don't really know what we're agreeing to for two reasons. First, when we go to a website we don't even know we're agreeing to a terms of use. Second, because the terms of use are complicated. Some websites have taken to writing the agreements in plain English but that's few and far between.

How can this change? First there will have to be legal challenges. In the case of user created content being sold to a third party based on some esoteric terms of agreement, the validity of these sales are going to have to be challenged in court. In some cases they will likely be over turned in others they might not.

Users will also have to fight against these agreements and refuse to accept them and potentially sue places that abuse the content that users put on the site or that allow third party sites to take their content without permission.

Balance between the large players and the users needs to be restored.

Edit: This story about HuffPo also highlights this imbalance.

The ACTA has been signed

For those of you who aren't aware the US and many other countries have signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA. This law provides a legal framework for nations across the world to enact something similar to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This framework gives additional control to law enforcement and copyright holders. Something also abnormal about this trade agreement is that the US claims that it doesn't need congressional approval. I find this extremely odd, as it's part of the charter of the legislative branch to approve trade agreements. Additionally, as I'm not a lawyer, I don't understand what's inherently different in the ACTA from the South Korean Free Trade Agreement, which has been stalled since Bush II.

At this point the EU hasn't signed the agreement yet. France and Germany have both enacted some already strict laws in regard to the number of strikes an infringer can have before they lose internet connections.Of course there are some serious issues with the approaches that are used to accuse copyright infringers. most of them deal with how to identify a suspected infringer. At this time France's first three strike infringer doesn't know how to do that. Additionally, in Germany, where a legislator wants a 2 strike law, the same legislator has already violated this before the law has gone into affect.

I believe that these cases really indicate that legislator really don't understand how the internet and copyright works. It's clear from the DMCA that they don't and neither do judges. However, I think that Judges are starting to seriously figure out what's going on with copyright and the controls that are being put into place. Recently in several districts judges have severed joint cases of copyright cases, because most of the IP addresses, which are typically associated to a region or city, were outside the jurisdiction of the court they are being tried in. Additionally, some judges are noting that IP addresses aren't people and other people could be using the IP address. Even more recently a judge writes that in the DMCA suggest if you own a DVD it's ok to rip it.Which is something that the DMCA is trying to prevent. DMCA was design to prevent circumventing the copy blocking technologies. It made it illegal.

Overall, the ACTA is a huge blow for advocates of reducing or eliminating copyright. I seriously hope that if this trade agreement does have to go through the US congress that it will be rejected. It's a law that doesn't take into account the current technologies and what culture really means.

Fortunately, not all governments support the ACTA. In fact Brazil has created an interesting framework that is the antithesis of ACTA. It is designed to support privacy, encourage usage of Creative Commons copyright(left) protection and have true net neutrality.

Amazon's Silk

Interesting read on Tech Dirt on Amazon.com's Silk browser. They note that it's a copyright infringement suit waiting to happen. If you're too lazy to read the article, basically Silk will copy whatever website you go to onto it's servers so it can send you a compressed version of it. For instance if a website that you're on has a 3mb picture they'll send you a 50kb picture instead. This does a few things. First, it will help relieve congestion on cell networks because smaller pieces of information are being sent. Second, it will save you data if you don't have an unlimited data package. Finally, it could violate copyright. Why? Because it's copying everything from a website and then sending you the information from a different source. Not only that, but it is effectively altering the picture they are sending you. I'm not sure if there have been any copyright cases based on compressing the quality of a picture, but for all intents and purposes it's altering the picture. It probably should fall under fair use, but you never know some one will probably try to sue over that.

There are some other issues to consider too. The browser has predictive capabilities based off of aggregate users actions. This is actually fairly similar to what Facebook is doing, but there are no implications for ads with Amazon (at this point we don't know if they store individual user statistics). The example they give on the website, is if you go to NYTimes.com and a high percentage of users then click on the business section Amazon will pre-load this information into their severs. This could have an impact on big websites' server loads as well. They could potentially be hit twice for a lot of visits to their site. If Amazon predicts incorrectly, then it will hit the server at least twice.

Another interesting consideration is related to ad revenue. Let's say users of some website like, I don't know KBMOD.com, always visit a YouTube account after reading the front page, let's go with InfiniteSadd, which would then auto play the video that's on top. This of course have the ad pop up on the bottom. Now the question I have is in these situations would this count as a click, or would the ads start to filter out views and click throughs from Silk? The situation, I presented is unlikely as there's no direct link from KBMOD to InfiniteSadd's user profile. But's easy to image that it could work that way.

I'd really like to know more about the user statistics that Silk will be collecting. Since the browser is going to be on their Fire device (who knows could also be an update for older Kindles as well), Amazon will know who is browsing what you are browsing and may actually keep that information in your account to predict your behavior better. I don't see any reason why they couldn't collect that data. I would imagine that it's very technologically feasible to use a larger aggregate dataset for websites you don't frequent, but for your most commonly visited websites for Amazon to have enough usage to figure out where you're going to go next.

I think the browser is a great idea. However, I can also see this turn into another way for Amazon to better target your recommendations. If you are on your Fire and they see where you go, then they will also know what other products you might be interested in that you haven't bought through Amazon before. If they know what interests you then they can put those into your "Silk based recommendations." Now there hasn't been any talk of that yet, but since they are selling the product at a loss they need you to buy a decent amount of product to get a return on their investment. I've seen two values, $50 and $10 losses.

Keep your eyes open for news on this, it could be a copyright and privacy issue before long.