Should an ISP block website because of a complaint by a corporation or an organization of corporations? This could be one question that could draw a line in the sand between the copyright industry and supporters of free speech in Europe.

Earlier this year, the European Union blocked the three strikes law by declaring internet access as a fundamental right. Since then, the copyright industry has been scrambling to find some sort of quick cheap fix to stop all forms of file-sharing on the internet by, among other things, implementing three strikes, censorship, throttling and anything else they can get other people to throw at file-sharing. Since the political way by implementing things like the three strikes law seemed to not be quick enough, the industry went after ISPs. Eircom in Ireland was one of those ISPs.

Starting September 1st, as a part of a settlement between the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) and Eircom, the ISP has agreed to start blocking The Pirate Bay.

Just days afterwards, the Irish Pirate Party issued a statement saying that they are “deeply concerned by news that eircom is to block access from its subscribers to thepiratebay.org.”

“The Party,” the statement continued, “which is opposed to censorship and stands for the protection of individual privacy, finds this action wholly disturbing and believes it should not go ahead.”

“The Pirate Party believes that this block will set a precedent not only for further monitoring of Internet users, censorship and general debilitation of Internet services in Ireland, but also for similar action against other Irish companies providing Internet services, such as BT Ireland, Smart Telecom, Perlico and UPC (two of which have already been similarly threatened), severely damaging competition in this sector and curtailing efficient broadband rollout.”

It should be noted that as of the 20th, other Irish ISPs did vow to keep fighting IRMA which wants to force ISPs to implement three strikes and blocking internet websites such as The Pirate Bay. Given that the Telecoms package had the final say on disconnections by saying that internet access is a fundamental right, it’s not hard to conclude that Irish ISPs disconnecting users is not only bad publicity, but illegal by European law as well. From an observational standpoint, a lawsuit to force an ISP to break European law seems to be some sort of legal twilight zone – one can only imagine what is going on behind the scenes of these ISPs that are still fighting.

The Irish Pirate Party also noted that backup copies of The Pirate Bay have been distributed online as well and questions whether blocking the site would be even remotely effective in the first place.

In addition, the Irish Pirate Party quoted sections of Irish copyright laws IRMA used to go after ISPs and pointed out that “Neither the Pirate Bay, nor Eircom, store any copyrighted materials on any of their servers or within their service infrastructure. Also since the law specifically refers to singular works this section of the law cannot be used against an entire site or service.”

Unfortunately, as it has been proven in past cases, what local laws say hardly matters since the copyright industry tends to interpret copyright laws their way and enforces their interpretation of the laws as they see fit. In the past, this point was particularly prevalent when the copyright industry persuaded Swedish lawmakers to break local Swedish law when the websites server farms were raided by police back in 2006. The move by anti-piracy efforts backed by the US earned lawsuits from local businesses who were taken offline thanks to the server farm raid. Accusations of illegal activity by officials in 2006 during the raid ran fast and furious.

The kind of debate over whether or not ISPs are allowed to enforce their own three strikes policy or are allowed to arbitrarily block websites at the copyright industry bidding doesn’t appear to be exclusive to Ireland given that this kind of debate is already happening in the UK when a key political figure did a “u-turn” on the governments stance on three strikes after spending a short vacation with an American billionaire from the copyright industry and, by extension, in the Netherlands where MiniNova was ordered to remove all links to trackers containing allegedly copyright infringing material.

While it seems that the copyright industry is trying to find every back door they possibly can to try and find ways of defying the will of the European Union, this effort could ultimately backfire as it further legitimizes the stance of the Pirate Party in many European countries. It gives very real relevance to the concerns of the party for potential new voters who have already voted in one to two members of the party into the European Union. If the copyright industry doesn’t see it, surely policymakers should given that it’s their jobs on the line, not the industry’s.

Whether this particular issue between Eircom and IRMA becomes a key political point remains to be seen, but at the very least, it’s shaping up to be another controversial point in the European copyright debate.

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A user uploaded several clips of the copyright debate that took place on BNN. BNN then found out about the clips being uploaded to YouTube and issued a complaint and had the clips taken down. That caused the user to post accusations on a blog that the network is actively trying to censor the copyright debate. Quite the accusations. Is it true? Rose Noonan, the Sales Coordinator of BNN told ZeroPaid, no.

“BNN is certainly not trying to censor or silence the Canadian copyright debate – or any other topic.” Noonan told ZeroPaid.

So, if it wasn’t censorship, then what was it?

“The removal of BNN clips took place because the clips were posted without permission.” Noonan explained. She continued, “This is the only reason. The material was produced by, and is owned by BNN – Business News Network.”

The blogger making these accusations said that there was evidence that suggested that the only clips that were being removed were copyright debate related.

“When it became evident that numerous unauthorized BNN clips were posted on Youtube, a request was made that they remove all of the clips. This process involves finding each individual URL and sending them to Youtube to request that they be taken down. Attempts were made to find all the clips, but if there are still some there, that is an indication that a few may have been overlooked. There was never any intention to target clips of any topic.” Noonan said.

“In total,” Noonan said, “over 193 BNN clips were removed from Youtube – less than 3% of these clips were related to copyright. They were clips covering numerous topics and certainly not limited to copyright issues or anything else.”

Now that we received the other side of the story, a more probable explanation can be made. In instances in the past regarding other copyright infringement notices on YouTube where multiple clips are taken down, it’s possible that for the side of copyright owners to merely see it as just taking down unauthorized material from multiple sources. Meanwhile, on the other side of the infringement notice, the incident is much more personal. The notice is directed at you, as a user, in particular and can give off the impression that this take down was directed at you specifically – and when it’s political in nature, it can be very easy to take that take down notice as merely a case of a big faceless corporation trying to remove important debates from the public because of certain viewpoints – even though in this case, that wasn’t the case.

This case for BNN is easily a political mine field given thepolitically sensitive nature of copyright. One of the major arguments in the copyright debate is, in fact, that copyright can be used as a tool for censoring free speech. How does a copyright holder try to take down copyrighted material when the subject of that video is copyright in the first place? Did the take down indirectly affect free speech? Technically speaking, yes, there is a grain of truth to be had here. Ultimately speaking, the larger accusation that BNN wants to cover up or censor any debate in particular isn’t necessarily true. The take downs related to copyright were a tiny part of a larger round of take downs by the network with no debate targeting in mind.

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There are plenty of ways to see this as ironic. By actively trying to remove the clips in the first place, it brings more publicity to those clips in the first place. If the accusation turns out to be true, it also highlights a perfect example of when copyright can be used to suppress free speech. the video clips have since been placed back up onto not only YouTube, but another video sharing site as well. Those clips and commentary on the matter can be found on the Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights.

“Over a year ago,” the blog posting says, “following the introduction of Bill C-61 we posted two videos to YouTube relating to Canadian copyright reform. These videos originally aired on the Business News Network formerly Report on Business TV. One video featured Canadian copyright scholar/expert Howard Knopf squaring off against Stevan Mitchell of the Entertainment Software Association (Howard Knopf Coming To The Defense Of Canadian Consumers – YouTube).”

“The second video featured professor Jeremy de Beer sparring with CRIA lobbyist, Barry Sookman over the implications of Bill C-61 (Jeremy de Beer & Barry Sookman On Bill C-61 – YouTube). On June 22, 2009 YouTube notified us that these videos had been removed citing a copyright complaint from The Business News Network.” The posting continued.

“Just a few days prior to our videos being pulled Jesse Hirsh tweeted that YouTube had just pulled one of his videos.” The posting explained, adding, “A BNN clip which had Jesse taking on a CRIA representative (Jesse Hirsh on RoBTV Regarding BitTorrent – YouTube). What was happening? Was BNN demanding every clip posted on YouTube be taken down or were they targeting clips relating to Canadian copyright reform only? A quick search of YouTube would indicate the latter.”

Copyright is a touchy subject for many Canadians. It’s, in part, why Bill C-60 and Bill C-61 died on the order paper and the issue hasn’t, so far, been resurrected by the current government. Many in Canada know how copyright can affect their day-to-day lives and any bill that encroaches on their rights, such as through anti-circumvention measures, can easily be seen as a threat at this point. It’s not hard to imagine the foreign interests who want to push for tighter copyright laws are not happy about the situation.

It’s not hard to see this latest development as an attempt to try and change the debate in Canada – at this point, a failed attempt that could backfire. Still, there’s little doubt that if the clips in question are removed again, they’ll find their way on other sites as well.

Update: BNN has refuted these accusations.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

The news could only serve to push the deeply divided debate further into the limelight Germany. News is surfacing that points out that the controversial web censorship legislation in Germany has been passed by the German parliament. Already, a member of the Social Democrats, Jörg Taussig, defected from his party on this controversial issue to become a Pirate Party member – thus also marking the first time the Pirate Party managed to get a member into the German parliament in the first place.

Already, there have been protests on this very issue. An e-petition has been made to stop such legislation and gotten over 134,000 signatures.

The Pirate Party is against web censorship and made their opposition to web censorship a part of their election platform during the European elections. The German Pirate Party posted about the protests (Google Translation). They have a slogan about the censorship proposal saying, roughly translated to English, “Erase the Bocks Instead – Stop Web Censorship!”

The German Pirate Party argues that child pornography must be stopped, not hidden behind a bunch of stop signs. The argument appears to be based off of the fact that government mandated censorship can be circumvented through proxies. The currently proposed censorship legislation would put up stop signs if anyone were to access a banned website.

One thing is for certain, the way things are going in Germany, this issue is only going to get more people involved.
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The German Pirate Party has a new reason to celebrate. Not only do they have a member, soon to be two members, in the European parliament, but now they have a member in the German Bundestag (German Parliament). The Pirate Party website posted about this development on their blog.

We welcome the fact that more can see that the fight for free communication in an open society is the way forward, and not censorship, blocking and monitoring,” says Rick Falk Vinge, party leader for the Swedish Piratpartiet via Google translation, “It is particularly gratifying to an existing MP sees this.”

Both the Finnish and German pirates have reacted very strongly against that child pornography is used as a battering ram to impose censorship and silence political opponents,” says Falk Vinge. “It is shameful, unscrupulous and cynical to use such a horrible event as an excuse for introducing mass surveillance and [censorship].”

Already, protesters marched in the streets of Germany over proposed censorship laws. This happened along side a petition that has over 130,000 signatures denouncing the proposed laws.

The posting on the Pirate Party blog also pointed out that legitimate sites have been put on similar censorship lists in other countries. They point to the Finnish transparency website which was put on the blacklist as one example.

A few months ago, questions were raised over the fact that Australia’s ACMA blacklist contained legal websites. ACMA responded by not only refuting the authenticity of the list, but also threatening to fine anyone who links to banned websites including URLs found on Wikileaks $11,000 per day.

Last year, British censors were blasted for putting Wikipedia on the blacklist.

Clearly, what this latest development shows is just how contentious the German proposed censorship law really is. If it’s enough to cause at least one MP to dump his political allegiance in favour of another political party because of this issue, you know it’s one hot topic.
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There’s a rather disturbing report from EDRI where a man was posting some of the URLs contained in the Finnish blacklist on a website. While the operator was interrogated by police and threatened to be prosecuted, no charges ever emerged. Still, the website remained on the Finnish mandatory blacklist. So the operator demanded that his website be removed through the Helsinki Administrative Court. The result? He didn’t get anywhere and his website still remains on the blacklist.

An EDRI editor commented, “the most worrying aspect is that while the court admits that the case is in fact about censoring Mr. Nikki’s personal site, it totally walks over the Finnish constitution and the rights enshrined in it in relation to freedom of speech, without even giving any reasoning why it has done so. This is a grave violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

The case seems to highlight another remarkable instance where transparency and accountability is off the agenda when it comes to web censorship. What this case also makes obvious is that in order to maintain freedom of expression, one needs to rely on the support of other countries through, for example, proxies. Why is this so important? Just ask any Iranian political dissident why internet free speech is important.

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

For many, it’s viewed as a country going from bad to worse in terms of law proposals. First, there was the French three strikes laws and other similar pieces of legislation and now LOPPSI 2. Last month, we broke the news for English speakers about this legislation and now a French cybercrime expert was able to discuss various aspects of the law in French newspaper Le Monde (Google translation) and there were some interesting points being made throughout the numerous responses.

The first response noted that, traditionally, surveillance involved microphones and video cameras. Since it requires a lot of time and money to have them installed covertly on someone, it’s not scalable – that is to say, you can’t spy on tens of thousands of people because it requires too much time and money. The same cannot be said for installing key loggers and trojan horses on peoples computers for covert surveillance purposes since once one creates a trojan or a piece of spyware, theoretically, they can be installed on thousands of machines at no extra cost because the scalability is far greater. This leads to the fact that this legislations paves the way for unprecedented surveillance powers for police and the government.

Another point is the fact that people with malicious intent, or criminals for that matter, use precisely the same kind of technology that is suppose to be used by police. The reason that is important is because anti-virus and anti-spyware technology is specifically designed to block such technology. It then leads into a more disturbing question – are anti-virus companies going to be ordered by the French government to create white-lists for Trojans and spyware? Not mentioned in the response is if someone is going to create their own programs to detect and remove such technology should that happen.

In one part of the conversation, there was the question on who these viruses and spyware intended in terms of geography. The legislation is intended to be for traditional criminals on French soil. Not mentioned in the response is that given how networked todays society is on the internet, how malware can be confined to one country in particular is going to be an extremely difficult proposition in and of itself. Still, in another response, Lovet discussed the fact that the legislation is intended to stop child pornography and terrorists – yet, in practise, that turned out to not be the case in countries like Australia, England and Thailand where legitimate websites wound up being in the blocklist as well – both Australia and Thailand had sites on the blacklist for nothing more than political purposes.

Lovet touched on the fact that, while malware exists to covertly activate microphones and webcams, the legislation doesn’t cover such activity as the legislation talks about content that appears on the individuals computer screens.

While discussing the web censorship side of things, there was discussions about SSH and TOR that exists. Those who are familiar with such technology could easily bi-pass the web censors of France. Therefor, informed people can, indeed, escape the censors while uninformed people would be affected. When asked whether or not bi-passing web censors was legal or not, Lovet responded, saying that this is a very good question, but he didn’t have an answer.

There was a question about which operating system the malware would target. In response, Lovet suggested that it’s impossible to have malware programmed for all systems given how deep the malware would be embedded. This, of course, doesn’t rule out the possibility that different malware could be used for different operating systems.

The topic of how the blacklist would be compiled was brought up. Unfortunately, just like Australia and Thailand, the list would be compiled in secret and away from public scrutiny. While it’s a great idea for an independent entity to offer some checks and balances, this doesn’t seem to be a part of the legislation – thus opening the door for a similar incident that happened in England where Wikipedia was blocked, not just what happened in Australia and Thailand.

All in all, Lovet says that this new legislation gives a government a foot in the door toward government censorship on the internet. From what we can observe on an international level, when it comes to topics like censorship and surveillance, this follows a worldwide trend of legislate first, address accountability later – and it always has been this kind of thing that ends badly for the government. From the examples we’ve seen, the blacklist ended up being leaked, legitimate websites are discovered on the list and the government looks bad (this is putting it mildly) as a result.

Still, the awareness of such a law doesn’t necessarily present this law in a good light. When legislation requires a certain amount of effort to be portrayed in a positive light, should it be considered at all given the negative impacts on online rights? More importantly, what does this legislation open the door to when the copyright industry pressured the world to follow the French model of three strikes?

Have a tip? Want to contact the author? You can do so by sending a PM via the forums or via e-mail at drew@zeropaid.com.

Yesterday, we highlighted a professor who called people at the EFA “Extremists” on Australian IT. Now, Electronic Frontier Australia has issued a response to what they consider, among other things, misrepresentations he published.

The EFA says that the filtering scheme is a “policy mess”, won’t protect children, will not be useful for law enforcement and is not exactly the most public move the governments ever made.

From the response:

Let’s humour our critics for a moment and don the cyber-libertarian hat. Are there also good reasons here to oppose filtering? There are of course many amongst EFA and those sympathetic to its work that do admire and cherish the open, anarchic free-wheeling nature of the Internet. It’s hard to deny this is part of what makes the net such an exciting and valuable medium for culture and entrepreneurship. Heavy-handed regulation could, in theory, damage this and make the Internet less useful for everyone.

On the other hand, the Government clearly has the right to legislate on content and networks in Australia. There could be many cases when government regulation and intervention could be positive for the net – bolstering our network capacity and ensuring fair competition in the market for network services come to mind. The outlawing of images online that depict actual child abuse is a good example of a content law that few would oppose, and is one that is actually enforceable and is gaining convictions. It would seem silly, then, to simply oppose all internet regulation as a matter of principle.

The EFA also says that there are home-based filters in existence today to help control what children see online. They also say that education and adult supervision are also options to help protect children in the first place. Additionally, they say that Hamilton is merely attacking a straw man.

It may be difficult for some to read what this professor has published in Australian IT without noting a certain amount of irony, but a he has essentially said that the internet doesn’t belong to people who have “Libertarian” beliefs. It does seem to highlight how heated the web filtering debate in Australia has become.

He starts out his article by saying that the internet filtering technology in Australia as proposed by the Australian government was to stop children from looking up porn on the internet. This may be news to a number of people who are watching the filtering debate unfold in Australia given that the first things we’ve heard out of the country’s government revolved around child pornography, not children watching pornography; that is, of course, if you take what the government says as fact of course.

He continues his piece saying the filtering debate is little more than filtering porn and how opponents are arguing that there is nothing wrong with children having free access to it. All this ignoring any hint that the debate has gone well beyond this into things like, “is it possible, let along right, to have these filters block all forms of p2p traffic?” or how do these filters plan on avoiding blocking legitimate sites like Wikipedia as has happened in England for instance.

Afterwards, he goes as far as to say that the people at Electronic Frontier Australia “represents the most extreme strand of internet libertarianism“ He uses porn as a red herring to support the internet filtering movement with the following:

Fortunately, we do not live in the type of society favoured by organisations like Electronic Frontiers Australia. We live in a democracy where citizens ask their governments to impose restrictions on certain types of content that are regarded as harmful to individuals or to the community more broadly.

He acknowledges that there are grey areas in the debate, but says that, for the most part, most kinds of content is either “black” or “white” and says this:

I have no in-principle objection to censoring the internet in the same way we censor other media, and I suspect most Australians would agree. Certainly, most parents of teenagers agree.

It almost seems as though he isn’t aware of the fact that the internet functions drastically different from other forms of media. Can a television be encrypted in a way to view something to avoid censors like an internet service? Not really. Does internet content largely reside in Australian control? Hardly. A far cry from what can be said about Australian television which can technologically be more heavily regulated.

To his credit, he cites the fact that filtering could degrade internet performance by 87%, but dismisses the statistic as scare-mongering, using an unsited statistic that another filter would degrade performance by 2%. Where he got this statistic is unclear. He also doesn’t deny that 1 in 12 sites would be mistakenly blocked which, in and of itself, is quite interesting.

He concludes with, “the most revealing words in the Get Up statement are “our internet”. The internet does not belong to the net libertarians, who seem to believe they inhabit a cyber-nation that is beyond normal forms of social regulation. The net belongs to all of us and, like other forms of communication, is subject to our collective decisions.“

This might be true if Get Up said, “My Internet”, but who does the internet belong to? It’s a neutral medium that anyone with a connection can contribute to. How can one entity set the standards for everyone on a medium such as the internet. Someones standards in China may be completely different to that of someones standards in Britain. Considering the fact that filters being proposed don’t really have an opt-out system, it’s mandatory for every citizen.

No one is saying that all filters are bad, but what many find offensive is the fact that these new government mandated filters will be used on everyones internet connection. It’s the lack of choice in the matter. With this in mind, the professor almost insinuates that users shouldn’t have a right to choose what they see online. There’s a huge difference between someone wanting to put filters on their computer and a government forcing everyone to use their filter – regardless of what is being filtered. How exactly to you call removing a freedom of choice democratic? It’s far easier to call that a dictatorship more than anything else.

Controversy erupted yesterday over a plan to classify internet websites in an effort to supposedly “save the children”. Now, Open Rights Group is pointing out that a British MP is now seeking feedback on the proposal. Since Britain is already negotiating with the Obama administration over bringing the idea to the United States as well, it will likely be of interest to American internet users as well.

While it seems rather odd that an MP who admits that internet policy is not his speciality is in charge of public feedback, at least someone is trying to limit the damage done by the ‘negotiate with other countries first, ask questions later’ style of legislating. As of this writing, the MP has already received 115 comments so far on the subject. Open Rights Group requests that users be polite when offering their thoughts on the matter.

We here at ZeroPaid have already already commented on why the internet should not be considered as little more than a ‘broadcaster’, but it’s worth pointing out again that the internet is so dynamic and expansive, it would really be an unworkable plan to begin with.

In effect, even if there is mandatory filtering, under such a system, it would punish more honest website administrators and award the less than honest website administrators. Even when one narrows it down to just filtering all that filthy porn from the computer screens of a younger audience, a) some porn is marketed towards people who are under 18 thus discouraging administrators from using a ratings system that would block minors altogether from their websites, b) countless websites are located outside of Britain (and the United States for that matter), thus showing that there would always be numerous administrators who would not be aware of such a system in the first place and c) todays younger generation is much more tech savvy then that of a younger generation 40 years ago. If they well and truly want to look at such content, they will more than likely find ways of circumventing pretty much any system they want to defeat (in a similar fashion to that of how the hundreds of different iterations of Digital Rights Management always failed to “protect” content from being copied) The most well known example is how a 16 year old in Australia cracked the governments $84 million dollar porn filter in 2007. In short, when one grows up with the technology, chances are, they will know much more about it to begin with and have a better chance at getting around supposed road blocks a government or company throws at them.

So really, it should be up to parents to control what their children see on the internet. Technology that regulates what a child sees already exists (some anti-virus companies bundle this sort of technology with their anti-virus programs). If parents are concerned, they can install such software on their own computers. If a government tries to take the parental roll and create a blanket system for the entire internet and for every user, it’s doomed to failure due to the sheer size of a task it’s attempting.