ZeroPaid.com » internet

Fight Back: Speak Out Against ACTA, Sign the Petition

Jon Kaykin — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:21:46 +0000

Learn more about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and sign the petition against it. If you don't know what the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is please see this: [embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoW26CwhcR8[/embed] ACTA can be more dangerous than SOPA and PIPA and can potentially create new legal standards of intellectual property enforcement, meaning that Internet distribution and information technology would be highly monitored and constantly reported to law enforcement agencies. We must not let this bill pass, we must continue to preserve the freedoms granted to us by the Constitution. Please sign the below petitions and speak out against this bill, stand up and protest while we still have that freedom. Learn how to act against ACTA. Petitions -

U.S. anti-ACTA White House Petition: sign it
Canada - Petition: sign it
Canada - Take 1 minute to send a letter contesting Bill C-11: here
Ireland - anti-SOPAIreland Petition: sign it
Poland - ACTA Referendum: here
Global anti-ACTA Petition: sign it

Attend a local Protest -

Pan-European Map of anti-ACTA protests: here
Denmark
Netherlands (Amsterdam)
Czech Republic (Prague)
England (London)
England (Nottingham)
Ireland
France
Scotland (Glasgow)
Germany (Berlin)
Germany (Bremerhaven)
Germany (Hanover)
Germany (Hamburg)
Germany (Mainz)
Germany (Minden)
Germany (Munich)
Germany (Trier)
Germany (Regensburg)
Germany (Stuttgart)
Sweden (Stockholm)
Sweden (Helsingborg)
Sweden (Goteborg)
Poland (Gdansk)
Poland (Wroclaw)
Poland (Katowice)
Poland (Krakow)
Poland (Bialystok)
Poland (Szczecin)
Poland (Lodz)
Poland (Bydgoszcz)
Italy (Porto Vecchio)
Portugal (online)
Malta (Valletta)
Slovenia (Ljubljana)
Bulgaria (Sofia)
Romania (Bucharest)
Romania (Bucharest)
Romania (Cluj)
Romania (Timisoara)
Latvia (Riga)
Austria

Stand up, Speak out. Learn more about ACTA here. Jon@zeropaid.com | @jkaykin

Really?! The FBI May Soon Monitor Social Networks

Jon Kaykin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:20:34 +0000

The FBI has submitted a request for the creation of software that will search through "publicly available" information on social networks in order to discover emerging threats. After shutting down Megaupload, it seems as if the FBI isn't quite satisfied, they want more control over information. So what's their next plan? A social media application. You heard right; the FBI has posted a Request For Information (RFI) regarding the development of a social media application that can monitor online activity. "The application must have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow the SIOC to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats." Although the RFI is lengthy and its jargon is technical, it isn't hard to understand and I recommend you read it. But if you don't feel like reading it, here are some important features that the application should have:

Provide an automated search and scrape capability of both social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis, and threats that meet the search parameters/keywords defined by FBI SIOC.
Ability for user to create, define, and select parameters/key word requirements. Automated search of national news, local news, and social media networks. Examples include but are not limited to Fox News. CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Provide instant notifications of breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats that have been vetted and meet the defined search parameters.
Ability to immediately access geospatial maps with coding in addition to providing critical infrastructural layers. Preferred maps include but are not limited to Google Maps, Google 3D maps, ESRI, and Yahoo Maps.
Ability to instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all “publicly available” tweets across the Twitter Site and any other “publicly available” social networking sites/forums (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, etc.).

While I believe that it is great that the FBI would like to use social media to discover possible threats, the idea of a "spider" searching through online interactions doesn't appeal to me. The FBI says that it would monitor "publicly available" information but with 67% of online social networking account owners having concerns about privacy on social networking sites (ESET), I think that a lot of people would add strict privacy settings to their accounts, thus making that information private. Lillie Coney, the associate director of a Washington-based privacy group commented on the FBI's request calling it "ridiculous. "Get a warrant," she said. "You don't know half the people you communicate with on Twitter. They are going to launch investigations and start looking at all sorts of people that they have no right to be investigating. There is no accountability, no transparency and no oversight." It's true, the FBI doesn't have the right to investigate our private interactions but unfortunately it's the FBI and they can do whatever they want. With tight privacy settings on many social networks, a lot of information is considered private, so I don't know how viable this will be. It could cause many court cases and civil liberty actions. I guess we will have to wait and see how the application turns out. Any thoughts? Jon@zeropaid.com | @jkaykin

RIAA’s VP of Strategic Data Analysis Issues Statement On Megaupload Shutdown

Jon Kaykin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 01:46:19 +0000

RIAA's VP of Strategic Data Analysis believes that the shutdown of Megaupload and other P2P file sharing sites is mandatory and will decrease file sharing. Truthfully, it will upset many. Megaupload's shutdown by the Justice Department has caused a lot of controversy regarding piracy and whether file sharing sites like Megaupload should exist. One of the major supporters of the shutdown was the Recording Industry Association of America, naturally because they handle copyrighted music and want to make sure that no "unauthorized content including music, movies, and other copyrighted works" is shared. The shutdown led the RIAA's Vice President, of Strategic Data Analysis, Josh P. Friedlander, to issue a statement on their blog, titled Why Closing Megaupload Matters. Although, the post is aimed towards Megaupload, it mainly points out why they believe closing P2P services is important, alluding to Limewire's shutdown. Supposedly, the shutdown of Limewire, according to the NPD group, decreases the use of P2P file sharing but really, with all the P2P file sharing sites out there, I find it hard to believe there is a decline in use. Friedlander also points out, "Digital music sales that had been flagging jumped in the month immediately after the Limewire shutdown, and have remained stronger ever since (note that while the Beatles did go on iTunes in November of 2010, they only account for a small portion of that sales increase, and current music sales went up even more than catalog). When Billboard looked at the data after the Limewire shutdown it said “The spike in sales was immediate, noticeable and lasting." A chart of the sales spikes in 2011 can be seen below. While this evidence may support the shutdown of P2P file sharing sites, the problem is that it doesn't matter. Shutting down these sites will not, as Friedlander says, "encourage users to go to legitimate sites," rather it will make them upset and angry, as in the case of Pirates of Catalonia, a political party in Catalonia that supports intellectual property reform, open access to culture and knowledge, transparency and Direct Democracy. They have announced a collective civil action in Spain against the FBI because the shutdown has caused many users to lose files containing personal information and this may have violated Articles 197 and 198 of the Spanish Penal Code. It's understandable that many artists (and there record labels) want to be compensated for their hard work but in the case of many Megaupload users who lost their important personal files, action against the unlawful seizure of those files must be taken. Many have spoken out regarding the shutdown of Megaupload and many P2P file sharing sites such as Filesonic, Fileserve, FileJungle, UploadStation, 4shared, VideoBB, VideoZer, UploadBox, and Uploaded.to have shutdown their services to the U.S. As I stated above, regardless of the shutdowns, people will continue to use P2P file sharing sites and they will collectively rise up to keep the sites around. See Also: 10 Alternatives to LimeWire Jon@zeropaid.com | @jkaykin

ZeroPaid Speaks to Executive Director of Tor Project About PROTECT-IP Act

Drew Wilson — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:39:40 +0000

We've discussed the PROTECT-IP Act at length here at ZeroPaid. While we have plenty of ways of examining the PROTECT-IP Act, we've decided to talk to Andrew Lewman, the Executive Director of Tor Project, about Tor, and the PROTECT-IP Act.

There's been plenty of discussion about the PROTECT-IP Act. One way we've examined it is the technical side of it. The main question we asked a little while ago is essentially, is it technologically possible to actually stop alleged piracy on the internet through the PROTECT-IP Act. Our findings were really an overwhelming "no" after we explored 8 technical methods that, in theory, could easily circumvent DNS censorship. We even picked apart and debunked a piece by Don Henley who supports the PROTECT-IP Act late last month. One of the technical measures we suggested would be likely effective against DNS censorship was using Tor which is sometimes referred to as the onion router. It can be described as a network of proxies one can use to better protect their online privacy among other things. Since then, we asked Andrew Lewman, Executive Director and press contact of the Tor Project for his take on a few things. We mentioned to Lewman that there was some debate over which solution was best to bi-pass internet censorship. Is one solution better over another? This was the subject of some debate in our comments section and websites linked to our article. Lewman had an interesting take on that. "The first issue with the story is that there is no best solution for everyone. Censorship circumvention is very localized. Generally, using the least sophisticated method to circumvent is all you need to do." Lewman also explained, "The arms races with the censors proceeds slowly, in some cases by design, so as to not accelerate it for little gain on either side. The general population cannot keep up with the technical arms race, at least from our experience. It takes time for people to understand the risks and act accordingly." I think that is a very important point to make. It's one thing to say one person will start using tools to better protect their privacy, but it's quite another for the general population in a given country to start using such tools. In our e-mail conversation, I said to Lewman, "one person [in the debate over whether or not one technical measure is better than another] said that officials would start creating honey-pot nodes in the Tor network. To me, that doesn't make any sense because Tor uses multiple proxies, so it would make such an effort be almost a waste of time." "Law enforcement organizations already create 'honey pot' servers on many networks, including Tor. These servers fully log all accesses at a service, network, and ISP level. If the core, underlying protocol is correctly implemented, then the users have little to fear. Law enforcement agencies around the world are known to run Tor, I2P, Freenet, and generic socks/http proxies servers as part of a dragnet to catch criminals. While this statement may get you lots of page views, anyone that has thought about this for 30 seconds will realize this is of course the reality. Whether protecting someone's audio/video bits is equivalent to murder, rape, extortion, bribery, and slavery is for individual societies to determine." It is interesting that Lewman brought this up given one of our more recent reports noted that, in France, someone could get the same legal punishment for manslaughter as they would for online copyright infringement. We asked Lewman, "looking at what lawmakers are proposing in the PROTECT-IP Act, do you think that the proposed law is a threat to the internet? If DNS censorship is one way the government wants to remove remove copyright infringement, do you see that as being effective or do you see potential pirates simply routing their way around it?" "PROTECT-IP will break the American Internet." Lewman told ZeroPaid. He said, "It will simply move innovation elsewhere and drive the arms race towards an alternate domain name system not controlled by the US government. It may temporarily quell some sorts of piracy, but that victory will be short lived. In the beginning, there were many DNS root servers, not one single set. AlterNIC and many universities ran their own DNS root servers for their own purposes. Having spoken to various agents, they privately wonder why protecting someone's commercial bits is now equivalent to stopping child pornography, human trafficking, and other heinous crimes." ZeroPaid also asked, "if governments like the US government decide on trying to censor the internet, do you see it being possible that users will start using things like Tor more so than before because of a perceived threat to something like free speech?" It's already happening. See [Tor Metrics Portal - User Statistics] Lewman explained, "Our top ten countries by users is filled with "free democracies" that have started to either censor the Internet or implement Internet traffic data retention in some way." We would like to thank Andrew Lewman for taking the time out of his busy schedule to speak to us. To learn more about Tor Project or download and try out Tor project or otherwise support Tor in general, you can check out their homepage at TorProject.org. 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.

Guide: How to Enhance Your Web Privacy with NoScript

Drew Wilson — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 21:06:46 +0000

Privacy while surfing can be serious business for a number of web surfers. Some use a number of tools like NoScript to block unwanted scripts on websites they visit. This can help stop websites from tracking who that user is that visit that webpage, thus enhancing their privacy. This guide will show you how to download, install and use NoScript.

Before we start with the guide, we should offer a reason why someone would use something like NoScript. Many websites these days employ different tracking techniques. These website tracking techniques can tell the web owner a number of things about its users. The bits of information that can be obtained include type of web browser, country of origin, ISP, operating system, screen resolution, age, gender, marital status, type and level of education, which site you came from, which webpage you left on on the website and sometimes even the webpage you went to to name a number of these examples. I'm not entirely sure how some of these statistics are gathered, but such statistics can be made available by sites like Alexa which can give you a sense of what the traffic is like for a number of websites. On the other hand, usually, website owners track data on a more cumulative level. This means that, sure, it can detect you are from country 'X', but all the web owner typically sees is, 'X' number of users from from country 'X' Unless you are doing something that warrants individual attention, a website owner probably won't care about web hits on an individual basis. Even when you warrant their attention on a moderation level, chances are, it's a case of seeing a particular users IP address more than anything else. Having said all of that, tracking of your internet activity isn't (or, should I say, shouldn't be) compulsory when you've done nothing wrong. In a way, using NoScript can be your way of saying, "Hey, count me out of your statistics gathering". If you want to be one of those individuals that would rather opt out of being tracked using NoScript, then read on. For this guide to work, you need to be using the internet web browser FireFox. Step 1: Download NoScript As with many FireFox plug-ins, downloading and installing this plug-in is very straight forward. First, you need to the NoScript website. Under the NoScript logo, there's a green button that says "Download". Click on that button. When you do click on that link, you'll see a little pop-up message asking you if you really want to install NoScript. Since we want this plug-in, click on "Allow" Step 2: Install NoScript After you've allowed this plug-in to download, you'll get a pop-up window that asks you if you want to install this. Since we know this is not a malicious plug-in, we can go ahead and click on "Install Now" Step 3: Restart FireFox As with most other plug-ins we've encountered, you must restart FireFox for the installation to be completed. If you are ready, just click on "Restart Now" in the little notification window. Step 4: Test NoScript When your browser restarts, you should see one or two things. The first is that NoScript appears right next to your address bar as shown below: If you are on a website that uses scripts, you should see a bar along the bottom notifying you of any scripts the website you are viewing uses. As a test, we decided to browse to YouTube and see how NoScript behaves out of the box. This was our result: As we can see, there is a total of 24 scripts and no objects are present. By default, some scripts are automatically allowed on YouTube through NoScript. This can easily be changed through the NoScript menu that can be found either by clicking on the NoScript button or, as we demonstrate below, on the "Options..." button on the bar along the bottom of our browser: From this menu, we can easily pick and choose whatever set of scripts we want to allow. We can allow all scripts, block all scripts or allow and block different scripts. The thing to remember is that some scripts are needed to run many parts of a website. So, blocking all scripts may result in you not being able to view a website properly. Blocking and allowing scripts is more of something you have to feel your way through. You can block scripts that exists in the website itself and see how the website functions without it and then unblock it afterwards if you suddenly are unable to use a website in whatever fashion you choose. Experiment around with it is my best advice. Final Thoughts I think NoScript is a nice plug-in because it can tell you more about a website then you would just by loading it without any extra plug-ins. Sure, some websites seem simple, but then you can find out that a simple website can have two dozen scripts running in the background. It is also an added layer of security. While a light layer of security, it's better than nothing at all I think. Some malicious websites might use scripts to do a lot of nasty things to its users. I'm sure someone immersed in the field of back-end web coding would say it's entirely possible to create a whole variety of nasty stuff with scripts. NoScript can block websites that use malicious scripts which is a nice bonus. Overall, I think it's a nice thing to add to your plug-in collection.

Guide: Bandwidth Caps, What Speed Are You Really Getting?

Drew Wilson — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:37:58 +0000

When it comes to internet connection speeds, ISPs often advertise some blazing fast speeds - sometimes at a fairly cheap rate. Unfortunately, a lot of these deals come with a very big string attached to it - bandwidth caps. In response, we here at ZeroPaid have decided to offer some helpful tables that should show what your cap says about your internet connection.

Bandwidth caps are often the most annoying thing one can get with an internet connection. Sure, you can, say, download at 500 Megabytes a second, but what good is a connection like that when all you got is a 10 Gigabyte cap? If you want to get a decent sense of just how frustrating bandwidth caps are, just ask hardcore Australian BitTorrent users how much they like bandwidth caps. While an advertised connection speed is interesting information, it doesn't really tell you the whole story about an internet connection. A bandwidth cap is often imposed on faster connections and when it comes to marketing an internet connection speed, the caps aren't always as well advertised. While they aren't as well advertised, the cap actually offers an important key component to figuring out just how fast your connection speed ultimately is on a monthly basis. What I propose is an "Average Connection Speed". If I left my internet connection running 24 hours constantly for a whole month without any let-up on down or upstream, what should I personally cap the speed at so I don't go over the monthly allotted limit on my internet connection plan? That is what I'd consider an "Average Connection Speed". Yes, it's very hard to achieve this in practice, so the numbers will be a bit conservative, but will give you a good idea what your average connection speed is. These parameters make it very easy to calculate what the average connection speed is. We should first presume, for easy math, that each month is 30 days. The reason we go by month is because many data plans give caps on a per month basis. We need to next figure out how fast the connection speed is in Mbps. Unfortunately, data doesn't necessarily divide as nicely as, say, meters to kilometers. Fortunately, data calculators online do exist. Since data plans often advertise the caps in Gigabytes a month, we need to figure out how many megabits that is in order to figure out our Mbps. From there, it's a matter of dividing. Since we are presuming each month is 30 days, we divide by 30. Since each day is 24 hours long, we first divide the total number of Mb by 24. Then, since each hour has 60 minutes, we then divide the figure by 60. Since each minute has 60 seconds, we finally divide by 60 again to get our figure. In case you don't feel like doing the math, we've created the following table for quick reference below. As an example of how a bandwidth cap tells the true story of an internet connection speed, we'll use the example of Comcast. In the Comcast FAQ, we can find out that their bandwidth cap 250GB a month. So, using our calculating method, we can determine that the actual speed of that particular connection on average is about 0.79Mbps. So, if we find a connection speed faster then that, then it's simply not worth it as we'll easily go over the cap. For additional reference, a 56k modem goes at around 0.055Mbps. According to old FCC rules, 200Kbps (or 0.2Mbps) was considered high speed broadband. The rules revised as of three years ago connection speeds up to 768Kbps (or 0.75Mbps) is considered first generation data. From there, connection speeds up to 1.5Mbps is considered basic broadband. So, here is our data table. You can compare data caps and connection speeds much more easily and find out what deal most closely resembles the advertised speeds.

Bandwidth Cap (per month)	Average Connection Speed (per month)
1GB	0.003Mbps
2GB	0.006Mbps
3GB	0.009Mbps
4GB	0.013Mbps
5GB	0.016Mbps
10GB	0.032Mbps
15GB	0.047Mbps
20GB	0.063Mbps
25GB	0.079Mbps
30GB	0.095Mbps
35GB	0.111Mbps
40GB	0.126Mbps
45GB	0.142Mbps
50GB	0.158Mbps
60GB	0.190Mbps
70GB	0.221Mbps
75GB	0.237Mbps
80GB	0.253Mbps
90GB	0.284Mbps
100GB	0.316Mbps
125GB	0.395Mbps
150GB	0.474Mbps
175GB	0.553Mbps
200GB	0.632Mbps
225GB	0.711Mbps
250GB	0.790Mbps
275GB	0.869Mbps
300GB	0.948Mbps
350GB	1.106Mbps
400GB	1.264Mbps
450GB	1.422Mbps
500GB	1.580Mbps
600GB	1.896Mbps
700GB	2.213Mbps
750GB	2.370Mbps
800GB	2.528Mbps
900GB	2.844Mbps
1000GB	3.160Mbps
1250GB	3.950Mbps
1500GB	4.741Mbps
1750GB	5.531Mbps
2000GB	6.321Mbps
2250GB	7.111Mbps
2500GB	7.901Mbps
2750GB	8.691Mbps
3000GB	9.481Mbps
3250GB	10.272Mbps
3500GB	11.062Mbps
4000GB	12.642Mbps
5000GB	15.802Mbps
6000GB	18.963Mbps
7000GB	22.123Mbps
7500GB	23.704Mbps
8000GB	25.284Mbps
9000GB	28.444Mbps
10000GB	31.605Mbps
11000GB	34.765Mbps
12000GB	37.926Mbps
14000GB	44.247Mbps
16000GB	50.568Mbps
18000GB	56.889Mbps
20000GB	63.210Mbps
22000GB	69.531Mbps
24000GB	75.852Mbps
26000GB	82.173Mbps
28000GB	88.494Mbps
30000GB	94.815Mbps
31000GB	97.975Mbps
32000GB	101.136Mbps

We should point out that this is, by no means, the only way to figure out whether or not a particular internet connection package is right for you. However, this does provide an interesting angle of looking at a given internet connection package. Again, this data assumes that every month is 30 days. 31 day months will change the numbers somewhat, but this graph is really meant to provide you with a general idea of what you are looking at in terms of bandwidth caps. 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.

Opposition to Canada’s Impending Surveillance Legislation Grows

Drew Wilson — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 22:09:03 +0000

The Canadian governing party - the Conservatives - are planning an omnibus crime bill that would include surveillance legislation. While the bill is not yet tabled, opposition to this bill is mounting.

There has been suggestions that the Canadian surveillance legislation long promised, but never passes, may be bundled in to an omnibus crime bill and tabled soon. For those following this story closely, that isn't exactly news. What is news, however, is that experts, academics and organizations, among others, have stepped up to formally oppose such legislation. An open letter was recently sent to Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressing their concerns about such legislation. They cite previous bills that made up the surveillance legislation in the last government session and voiced their concerns about them. The letter (PDF) opens, "We are writing to you regarding your promise to introduce and pass within 100 days an omnibus bill incorporating a number of very different pieces of legislation." The letter continues, "We are particularly concerned that three of those bills will have serious negative implications for the privacy rights of Canadians, and that these aspects will not receive the scrutiny they deserve if rolled into an omnibus bill." "These pieces of legislation were former Bills C‐50, C‐51 and C‐52 from the last session of the previous Parliament, the ‘lawful access’ technical surveillance bills. We join Canada’s federal and provincial Privacy Commissioners in voicing our grave concerns regarding this invasive legislative mandate, as they collectively did in a letter to Deputy Minister of Public Safety dated March 9, 2011." Their main focus of concern:

The ease by which Canadians’ Internet service providers, social networks, and even their handsets and cars will be turned into tools to spy on their activities further to production and preservation orders in former Bill C‐51 – a form of spying that is bound to have serious chilling effects on online activity and communications, implicating fundamental rights and freedoms;
The minimal and inadequate amount of external oversight in place to ensure that the powers allotted in these bills are not abused;
Clause 16 of former Bill C‐52, which will allow law enforcement to force identification of anonymous online Internet users, even where there is no reason to suspect the information will be useful to any investigation and without adequate court oversight; and
The manner in which former Bill C‐52 paves the way to categorical secrecy orders that will further obscure how the sweeping powers granted in it are used and that are reminiscent of elements of the USA PATRIOT Act that were found unconstitutional.

The letter also contains a highly detailed list of concerns in the appendix section. The letter also warns that the costs of implementing such surveillance measures would ultimately be passed on to consumers since it is a new cost of doing business for ISPs. Indeed, this type of thing has precedent. In France, when the French government forced ISPs to adopt a three strikes law, the ISPs simply passed the costs of maintaining the warning system on to consumers. The letter was signed by the following:

Andrea Slane, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Faculty of Social Science & Humanities Andrew Clement, University of Toronto, Faculty of Information British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (BCFIPA) Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) Christopher Parsons, University of Victoria, Department of Political Science Civil Liberties Association – National Capitol Region (CLA–NCR) Colin Bennett, University of Victoria, Department of Political Science David Lyon, FRSC, Queen’s University, Surveillance Studies Centre Ian Kerr, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) Kate Milberry, University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Leslie Shade, Concordia University, Department of Communications Studies Lisa Austin, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law Michael Geist, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law Michael Markwick, Simon Fraser University, School of Communications OpenMedia.ca Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) Samuelson‐Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) Sharon Polsky, President, AMINACorp.ca; National Chair, Canadian Association of Professional Access & Privacy Administrators (CAPAPA) Teresa Scassa, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law Valerie Steeves, University of Ottawa, Department of Criminology

I don't mean to sound overly pessimistic, but I think that there is one key difference between when Canadians fought very dangerous bills in the past and now. That key difference is the fact that the Conservatives have a majority government. That means that they can pass whatever bills they want without any fear of opposition. So, it wouldn't matter how much evidence or reason you present the government, Harper will simply legislate how he likes. If it drives the country in to the dark ages, it wouldn't matter because he has the power to stop any opposing voice on different debates as far as passing legislation is concerned. That's just the government Canada is stuck with. My personal hope is that Canada will have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms before Harper's term is up - or, at least a few shreds of it still intact. 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.

UK PM Wants to “Stop People from Communicating” on Social Media

Drew Wilson — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:45:04 +0000

The riots in Britain has certainly been a story major media outlets around the world have been following closely, but recent comments by British Prime Minister David Cameron on the riots have certainly raised a few eyebrows recently. Some people are saying that the comments insinuate that the Prime Minister wants to, in essence, censor the internet in the event of civil unrest.

Since trying to figure out what David Cameron is saying is in dispute, we have decided to post a video of what David Cameron said, in full, with regards to the riots: The relevant portion is 6:40 - 7:03. In the event the video is taken down, we also decided to offer this transcription of what Cameron said: "Mr. Speaker, everyone watching these horrific actions will be stuck- will be struck by how they were organized via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good, but it can also be used for ill. So we are working with the police, the intelligence services, and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people from communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality." The question is how would this be carried out? Would the government try and block certain individuals from accessing social media or would this be suggesting that the government intends to block out social media altogether? If that is uncertain, which possibility would be feasible? If the government intends to block specific individuals instead, that would mean that everyone on different web services would have to be monitored. For that, there would essentially be a need for a massive amount of man power to monitor every communication on a given network. If it can be broken down to one person monitoring ten people's communication, the number of people needed for such a task would be completely unfeasible just on wages, working space and training alone. The next logical step, in that case, would be to somehow automate the process. The only logical method to do so, that I can see, is have a system that monitors certain keywords. Such a method would be easily circumvented. For example, if the keyword being looked for is "riot", then all people would have to do is use the word "ri0t" instead and a simple word search would not be able to find it. If there's some Boolean involved where the word is "ri*t" (where the "*" can be anything) then the word can be changed again to "rio7". If multiple variations are in place, then one can simply use services like upsidedowntext.com and use "ʇoıɹ". What's more, messages can be further encoded by other means including Morse Code where "riot" would become ".-. .. --- -". There's really hundreds of ways to send a message in text to another party in the first place that don't include any of these ideas. No automated process would ever be bullet proof. The only other way is to track down individuals spreading such messages via other means. Really, if the government or industry interests has enough information on someone to censor them on the internet via alternate means, they might as well bust down his or her door and pick them up instead of wasting their time trying to keep them off of social networking sites in the first place. In any event, this possibility just doesn't seem one bit feasible. Forget whether it's right or wrong, I'm not convinced that it's even possible in the first place. That really leaves the other option, an option that Thinq is concerned about, blocking out social networking entirely during times of civil unrest. Some people say that Cameron didn't directly say that he wants to censor social networking entirely, but given what he did say and how implausible the other possibility is in the first, it's not a fear without merit in my view. For the sake of argument, let's say that Cameron did mean to say that he wants social networks censored during times of civil unrest. So Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry instant messaging is switched off. Then what? Well, people can simply use private IRC channels as an alternative. What if all IRC servers where somehow successfully switched off? Then people can use serverless chatrooms instead. What if the protocol is blocked at the ISP level in that case? Then the data stream can be encrypted. I'm sorry, but I don't see it working. The only way it would work is if the entire internet was shut down completely. No service for anyone period. That could reduce things down to a localized level at worst given the possibility of creating home-brew radio services among other possibilities. Ultimately, a solution like killing off all internet access in the country would really cause more problems then it would solve - both politically and legally. So even that, while more feasible then censoring individuals, is not all that feasible either. Since this is a political statement, I can honestly say that the most that can come from this at this time is simply the prime minister trying to portray an image of control over the situation. His comments with regards to social media, I think, can be taken as little more than hot air because it doesn't sound like he is able to wield power. In practice, it's very doubtful he would have that much power. [Via /.] 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.

OSCE – Three Strikes Laws Incompatible with International Obligations to Free Speech

Drew Wilson — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 23:29:44 +0000

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization has issued a report that explicitly states that a three strikes law is a disproportionate response to dealing with copyright infringement.

Last month, Frank La Rue, the UN’s Special Rapporteur slammed attempts to put in place three strikes laws as a violation of human rights. Now, it appears, that another large organization agrees with this. The OSCE recently published a paper documenting freedom of speech on the internet and laws that impacted such freedoms. The available PDF states the following with regards to the emerging of three strikes laws around the world:

The increased use of so-called “three-strikes” legal measures to combat Internet piracy is worrisome given the growing importance of the Internet in daily life. “Three-strikes” measures provide a “graduated response” resulting in restricting or cutting off the users’ access to the Internet in cases where a user has attempted to download pirated material. The third strike usually leads to the user’s access to the Internet being completely cut off. This disproportionate response is most likely to be incompatible with OSCE commitment on the “freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.” (55) In the Charter for European Security, the participating States in 1999 “reaffirmed the importance of independent media and the free flow of information as well s the public’s access to information [and committed] to take all necessary steps to ensure the basic conditions for free and independent media and unimpeded transborder and intra-State flwo of information, which [they] consider the be an essential component of any democratic, free and open society.” (56) Any interference with such a fundamental human right, as with any other human right, must be motivated by a pressing social need, whose existence must be demonstrated by the OSCE participating States and must be proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued. (57) Access to the Internet must be recognized as a human right, and therefore “graduated response” mechanisms which could restrict users’ access to the Internet should be avoided by the OSCE participating States.

(55) Paragraph 9.1. of the Final Act of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE, June 1990. http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2006/06/19392_en.pdf (56) Paragraph 26 of the Charter for European Security adopted at the OSCE Istanbul Summit 1999. See at http://www.osce.org/mc/17502. (57) See Paragraph 26 of the Final Document o fthe Moscow Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE, at http://www.osce.org/fom/item_11_30426.html. See also Olsson v. Sweden (No. 1), judgment of 24 March 1988, Series A no. 130, § 67, and Bladet Tromsø and Stensaas v. Norway [GC], no. 21980/93, ECHR 1999-III.

In other words, if a government of a given state supports their international obligations to free speech, then the "graduated response" laws where users are cut off after a third accusation of infringement must be avoided. You can't have free speech and a three strikes law at the same time. It's particularly interesting that this finding was made since France, the country that has a three strikes law already in place, is also a member of the OSCE. Another member of interest is the US, the same country that has been pushing other countries to implement a three strikes law. What this report essentially does is help solidify the point that a "graduated response" or a three strikes law is a violation of human rights. There are international bodies that do agree with this. The next question will no doubt be whether countries will actually listen to the report or push for laws that disregards human rights. We already know that the United States seems to be content with sacrificing their national security in favor of a six strikes agreement, so, it's difficult to say that free speech will be a motivating factor to slow down the implementation of these laws. 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.

Major French Political Party Wants to Repeal HADOPI

Drew Wilson — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 00:07:06 +0000

Martine Aubry, the secretary of the Socialist Party, has recently announced her intentions to repeal HADOPI ("law promoting the distribution and protection of creative works on the internet") - the famous French law that contains a three strikes law.

Numerama is noting some interesting news (Google translation, original) The article suggests that she feels that there is a better way to ensure that artists get paid for the content they create. She proposes a global license to be put on ISPs instead of disconnecting people from the internet based on mere accusations of infringement. More from the translation:

"Fairly, it would be a massive contribution to support culture in France, and to find that balance, I call first in an honest dialogue with all stakeholders," continues Martine Aubry, who Is also in favor of an adaptation and strengthening of copyright, particularly in the digital sphere. Finally, the fight against counterfeiting business must continue and be intensified. "Therefore, the war against Internet users who share the same time, they buy - will not happen again. The abandonment of the web laws, expensive, inefficient and against the time, seems to me so self-evident. That's why we are determined to repeal the "Martine Aubry concludes the chapter Culture and profitable new business models.

It's not hard to find flaws in a three strikes law. We've noted some of these flaws in the past on a number of occasions. One of the major flaws is the inability to conclusively tie a person to an IP address. One example of how flawed pinning an actual person to an IP address can be found in a study which concludes that one could frame a printer for copyright infringement in a BitTorrent swarm. Global licenses for downloading isn't necessarily a new idea, however, a number of people have proposed such ideas in the past. I think it's fair to say that many would also agree that a blanket license over ISPs is better than mass lawsuits or disconnections based on mere accusations. In Canada, one can trace the SAC proposal to as far back as 2007. In the US, the EFF has been proposing this sort of idea at least as far back as 2008. The French Socialist Party is no small party either. Wikipedia notes that the party has been around since 1969 in France. As of the last French election of 2009, the party finished second in popular support - second only to the current governing party, the UMP. They obtained 16.48% support while the UMP won with 27.88% support. In short, they are not a small party in France. What this could show is a growing discontent for HADOPI. If a major political party feels they can gain public support by outright saying that it should be repealed, then it doesn't exactly cast a positive light to the law itself. It's not surprising that the law isn't very popular and it looks like there might be some kind of momentum to ax the law completely. It will be interesting to see if this resonates enough to carry this over in to the next election which is still a long way away. Do you think HADOPI should be repealed? 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.