TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Google Wins Anti-Piracy Filtering Lawsuit, Filters Anyway
- Homeland Security Wants Mozilla to Pull “Domain Seizure” Add-On
- Piracy Politics Fuel Internet Censorship
| Google Wins Anti-Piracy Filtering Lawsuit, Filters Anyway Posted: 06 May 2011 02:48 AM PDT
As part of their anti-filesharing actions, in April 2010 SNEP initiated legal action against Google in an attempt to force the search giant to filter certain terms from their auto-suggest feature. It will come as little surprise that the words targeted were ‘torrent’, ‘RapidShare’ and ‘MegaUpload’. SNEP’s case relied on Article L336-2 of France’s intellectual property code. The article states: “In the presence of an infringement of copyright or related right caused by the contents of a communication service to the public online, the high court, acting as appropriate in summary proceedings,” is authorized to take “all appropriate measures to prevent or halt such infringement…” As noted by news outlet Numerama, this provision was introduced into law in anticipation that some day ISPs would be asked to block access to file-sharing sites. SNEP clearly thought they could extend the target of the legislation in their favor. In September 2010, the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris rejected the complaint and ordered SNEP to pay Google 5,000 euros in costs. Dissatisfied with the court’s decision, SNEP took the case to appeal, asking for damages of 1,000 euros for every day the results appeared in Google’s listings. Furthermore, they added a list of artists, albums and songs to be filtered in connection with the above terms. This week the Court of Appeal in Paris handed down its ruling. In common with the earlier decision, the Court found that the mere presentation of terms in a set of search results did not necessarily mean that an infringement of copyright would follow. Furthermore, in an apparent reference to RapidShare and MegaUpload, the Court noted that just because users of these sites can use them to transfer unauthorized copies of music, it does not automatically follow that the sites are rendered illegal as a result. The Court also made clear that SNEP could not hold Google responsible for the subsequent activities of Internet users who use their search engine. However, as first reported by TorrentFreak earlier this year, Google already took the decision to filter its auto-suggest feature, a move duly noted by the Court of Appeal. But does it then follow that this act of self-censorship must be an admission of guilt? “The fact that Google has filtered its results does not mean that they have complied with [SNEP's] request and admitted responsibility,” said the Judge, adding that despite Google’s actions, any infringing content still remains on the web. Once again the case was decided in Google’s favor and SNEP was ordered to pay 5,000 euros costs. Source: Google Wins Anti-Piracy Filtering Lawsuit, Filters Anyway |
| Homeland Security Wants Mozilla to Pull “Domain Seizure” Add-On Posted: 05 May 2011 02:23 PM PDT
The add-on maintains a list of all the domains that ICE (hence the antidote, ‘fire’) has seized and redirects their users to an alternative domain if the sites in question have set one up. The developers told TorrentFreak that they coded it to demonstrate the futility of the domain seizures, which they find objectionable. Homeland Security’s ICE unit got wind of the add-on and almost immediately took action to have it taken offline. Although the add-on can be hosted anywhere, they asked Mozilla to remove it from their repository just a few days after it first appeared there. “Recently the US Department of Homeland Security contacted Mozilla and requested that we remove the Mafiaa Fire add-on,” explained Mozilla General Counsel and Vice President of Business Affairs Harvey Anderson. “The ICE Homeland Security Investigations unit alleged that the add-on circumvented a seizure order DHS had obtained against a number of domain names.” However, where ICE might have expected a swift take down from Mozilla, the legal and business affairs department of the tech company was not planning to honor the request so easily. “Our approach is to comply with valid court orders, warrants, and legal mandates, but in this case there was no such court order,” Anderson explains. According to Anderson complying with the request without any additional information would threaten open Internet principles. So, instead of taking the add-on offline they replied to ICE with a set of 11 well-crafted questions. Interestingly enough, Mozilla never heard from ICE again. We can only guess how often U.S. authorities try similar mild censorship requests, but if we look at all the companies and services that kicked out Wikileaks last year we have to assume that it’s not the first time. Only a few dare to stand up to such requests, which is a worrying situation. “One of the fundamental issues here is under what conditions do intermediaries accede to government requests that have a censorship effect and which may threaten the open Internet,” says Anderson. “Longterm, the challenge is to find better mechanisms that provide both real due process and transparency without infringing upon developer and user freedoms traditionally associated with the Internet,” he adds. TorrentFreak got in touch with one of the MAFIAA Fire developers, who told us that ICE never contacted them with a takedown request. And although the add-on would still be available on their own website if Mozilla pulled it, he was happy that they chose to put up a fight. “Hats off to Mozilla for sticking up to them, at first we weren’t sure if Mozilla would even host it due to its controversial nature, but they truly backed up their open source supporting words with actions,” the developer told us. Indeed, Mozilla deserves to be applauded here for judging ICE’s request by its content, and not by the envelope in which it was sent. Meanwhile, the MAFIAA Fire team has published a Chrome version of the add-on today. Both add-ons are Open Source and available on the official website, which also has a mirror here to ensure continuity. Looks like ICE’s request to Mozilla just backFIREd… Source: Homeland Security Wants Mozilla to Pull “Domain Seizure” Add-On |
| Piracy Politics Fuel Internet Censorship Posted: 05 May 2011 07:35 AM PDT
As part of their ongoing effort to tackle online piracy, the House of Representatives organized a hearing last month titled "Promoting Investment and Protecting Commerce Online: Legitimate Sites v. Parasites, Part II." The main topic on the agenda was Google and why the company doesn’t do more to ensure that infringing materials aren’t indexed. Earlier this year we discovered that following pressure from the entertainment industry, Google had already taken steps towards censoring their search results for this very reason. The result was that legitimate products of legitimate U.S. based companies (e.g. uTorrent from BitTorrent Inc.) are now actively censored from some of Google’s services. Let’s call it economic censorship. Google’s move was applauded by many politicians who subsequently cheered the search giant on to take it up a notch. During the House hearing last month the big question appeared to be why Google hasn’t ended piracy yet. Some clever search keyword filters could help there, some argued. Indeed, just look at the torrent site isoHunt which was ordered by a U.S. court to censor its search engine based on a list of keywords provided by the MPAA. Yes, isoHunt’s filter also makes some legitimate content inaccessible, but that’s just considered collateral damage. The overall agreement was that censorship is needed to solve online piracy. This idea is also nested in some of the more recent legislative proposals in the U.S. The COICA bill for example, that would grant US authorities the power to seize (thus censor) domains that are deemed by the authorities to facilitate copyright infringement. COICA was introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and supported by 18 other Senators including Sen. Dick Durbin. Again, with COICA it seems that censorship is not really seen as a major roadblock for prominent politicians. To some, economic censorship appears to be a must in order to protect corporate interests. The human rights and constitutional issues that may be violated in the process are reduced to collateral damage. Considering the above it’s very interesting to see that Senator Durbin, who supported the COICA anti-piracy bill, has this week voiced his concerns about Internet censorship taking place in China. Yesterday Durbin published a letter he wrote to the Chinese search giant Baidu. In his letter the Senator voices his concerns over Baidu’s censorship efforts and asked the company to take “immediate steps” to stop them. “I recently returned from a Congressional delegation to China. I decided to personally verify the reports about Baidu's censorship. During my trip, I accessed Baidu's homepage and attempted to search for a number of terms. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to see that Baidu heavily censors its search results,” Durbin writes. “As a member of the U.S. Congress, I am especially concerned about Baidu's internet censorship because of your company's extensive business dealings in the United States. Baidu has been listed on NASDAQ since 2005. I understand that two of Baidu's five directors are American and that American institutions are significant investors in Baidu,” the senator adds. So there we have it, censorship is a problem, but only if it suits the interests of the people advocating against it. This is often the case in politics of course. Many U.S. politicians don’t see any problems with Google censoring (possible) copyright infringement related terms, but if they or another search engine do the same with political terms then they change their tune. Censorship is censorship, but many western politicians seem to make a clear distinction between political and economic Internet censorship. Hypocrisy? |
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Last month we were the first to draw attention to a nifty Firefox add-on called "
Internet Censorship can be a confusing topic for politicians. In the U.S. most politicians have openly spoken out against rampant political censorship in countries like China, but at the same time on their home soil they are supporting censorship initiatives for economic motives. | You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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