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Operation Black March: An Anonymous Movement

Jon Kaykin — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:19:34 +0000

Hacktivist group Anonymous has called for Operation Black March, a movement against the media industry. Unfortunately, it might not be as successful as others think. As you may know, SOPA and PIPA have been postponed and have lost much support but the fight isn't over. Thankfully, many groups are still fighting against the music, film and media industry, the most important group being; Anonymous. Anonymous has been very vocal in letting the public know their plans for what they will do next and meanwhile, they have been diligently working; taking down many sites and issuing statements on Youtube (see this and this). On Friday, Anonymous released a set of leaks and hacks ( including the shutdown of the Greek government's Ministry of Justice website and a leak of a conversation between the FBI and Scotland Yard) that were publicized on their Twitter feed using #FFF. This was a large effort and received a lot of support from the public. But for Anonymous this was just scraping surface. Recently, they announced something they call: "Operation Black March." This operation is a boycott of the music, film and media industry, with the hopes that during March, people will not go see films, buy CD's, download songs, buy magazines, purchase video games -- do anything that will support the aforementioned industries: [embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWzRHnVbw5I[/embed] As the video states, "We will not tolerate the Media Industries' lobbying for legislation which will censor the Internet," and Anonymous is asking for our support. Although the cause is great and there is much support for this type of action, I don't know how successful this will be considering how massive the media industry is. The problem is that many people can not live one day, let alone a month without supporting big time media conglomerates. Think about it; you can't download apps to your favorite devices, you can't download new music (legally or illegally) as Anonymous states, you can't even see a movie. The idea is right and the support for this movement is necessary but with media ruling everyday of our lives, I just don't see how feasible of a task this is. It's quite intriguing what Anonymous has done and what they continue to do. With words such as, “[i]f you didn’t dig it then then you better dig it now. We are calling upon all allied battleships to rise up and make some mayhem. NDAA/PIPA/SOPA for real? The internet is ours for the taking, and we will destroy every corporation and government that attempts to stand in our way," it will be interesting to see where and/or what Anonymous attacks next. If Anonymous can get the support of many, which they already have, then anything is possible. We will just have to wait and see... You can follow Anonymous on Twitter and on their blog. Keep your eyes peeled and let us know if you discover any new Anonymous attacks. Jon@zeropaid.com | @jkaykin

Never go Hungry Again: 5 Top Restaurant Apps for the iPhone

Hannah — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:35:54 +0000

From the initial idea to paying the bill, this list has your meal out covered.

It’s the end of a long working week. You come home, and there’s nothing in the fridge, nor do you feel like doing anything that requires effort - like cooking. Going out seems to be the only option, but where to go? What to eat? These restaurant apps answer all those difficult questions. Urbanspoon Urbanspoon is the ultimate restaurant-finding app. Using their slot machine-style set up, simply shake your iPhone to get restaurant suggestions. You search for nearby establishments using GPS and filter your results by neighborhood, cuisine or price. When you find a restaurant that looks interesting, check out other users’ reviews and ratings, then use the app to book a table. The app keeps data on your dining history, so if you can’t remember that awesome place in Brooklyn you went to, Urbanspoon will help you out. Price: FREE LocalEats LocalEats is similar to Urbanspoon, but with one major difference: it only displays independent local cafes and restaurants. If you want to avoid the big chains and believe in supporting smaller, local-run businesses, this is the app for you. Search by city or state and let LocalEats be your guide with its “Top 100” lists. It will even book you a taxi at the end of a night out. Price: $0.99 OpenTable Want to make a reservation, but don’t want to deal with phone queues, stressed staff or the clanging of pots and pans in the background? Try using OpenTable to search for and book restaurant reservations without even picking up the phone. As well as a top search function that allows you to select a restaurant by name, price, location or food, you can book tables for parties of all shapes and sizes within a few taps. Use the app for long enough and you can earn Dining Points, which are redeemable as Dining Cheques at selected OpenTable restaurants. Price: FREE Restaurant Nutrition Once you’ve arrived at the restaurant, sat down, and have menu in hand, you’re going to want to know what you’re actually eating. The Restaurant Nutrition app is useful for anyone with dietary restrictions - medical or self-imposed - and gives you a breakdown of the ingredients and nutritional value of what you’re eating. As well as filtering food by allergens and using the app’s gluten-free menu feature, you can set calories limits and track how much of each food group you’re eating per meal. You can also post what you ate to Facebook - if that’s your kind of thing. Price: FREE Coupon Sherpa It’s time for the bill, and suddenly the financial implications of your indulgence set in. Luckily, Coupon Sherpa might come to the rescue. This app offers vouchers and discounts for all kinds of stores, including restaurants. It contains vouchers that are exclusive to Coupon Sherpa, as well as vouchers from the internet. Search for vouchers by store or, if you’re really strapped, find the nearest restaurant offering a discount using the app’s GPS function. Price: FREE hannah@zeropaid.com

Discover Great Apps With Appsfire

Jon Kaykin — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:43:53 +0000

Appsfire provides many tools for you to discover and share the greatest apps out there. With 500,000 apps in the app store and 300,000 in the Android Market , it can get kind of crowded. Everyday new apps are released but it's impossible for anyone to keep up. So how do you discover and share the best apps? Say hello to Appsfire, a community driven app discovery network. Appsfire provides tools and streams for users to be able to discover those gems. On their website they feature VIP's; these are people, as they call them, who are "the most influential and expert iPhone users around." Another feature on the site is something they call AppMixes, which is basically aggregated combinations of apps that have a common topic or functionality, for example: 11 Vital Mobile Apps for Entrepreneurs (source). Out of all the features, my favorite is AppTrends. This tool allows users to see the most trending apps according to Facebook (measured by the likes, comments and shares) or Twitter (measured by the amount of tweets). Using social media to discover app trends is brilliant. These aforementioned features are great for app discovery but in order to get the most out of what Appsfire has to offer, I recommend downloading the app. Here are the ways you can discover and share the best apps with Appsfire: FRIENDS Want to know what your friends use on their iPhone? Super easy with Appsfire: find out what your friends are using or loving or even removing. DEALS Save Money! Be the first to know when great apps go on sale, or even go free. LOCAL Check out the apps that are useful in your city or country. If you’re traveling, discover apps to help you navigate your surroundings. VIP’S Come and check the app that tech celebrities, bloggers and other app experts recommend HOT APPS Discover the apps that are being talked about on Twitter & Facebook, or soaring through the App Store rankings. APP MIXES We’re constantly scanning the web to find the best apps by topics created by the best publications. Looking for the best apps for photography, music, or cooking app? We’ve got that. SEARCH We enhance the search experience by including app mixes, so you can browse through apps which real people have identified as being high-quality. APPS FOR YOU Appsfire delivers you recommendations based on your personal tastes by analyzing the apps you have on your iPhone.* As you can see, Appsfire has figured out a great way to help users discover the best apps. With a nice design, clean functionality and a price tag of FREE, I recommend downloading it for iPhone/ iPad or Android. What are your opinions on Appsfire? Jon@zeropaid.com | @jkaykin

Leave no Question Unanswered: Top 5 iPhone Search Apps

Hannah — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:19:42 +0000

5 iPhone search apps that will help you answer those burning questions anywhere, anytime.

Remember those days when you had to wait until you were at a computer to look up information? With the dawn of the iPhone era, that time is well and truly over. Here are five top iPhone search apps that cover everything you could possibly need - and much, much more. JumpSearch The JumpSearch iPhone app has access to 40 popular US websites, meaning you can find what you’re looking for without having to type out the full URL of a search engine or store. The website categories featured in the JumpSearch app include storefront and web retail, news and sports, book sellers, finance, reference, general search and social networks. Once you tap in what you’re looking for, you can choose which store or search engine you want to use to find it. You can mail the search results to a friend or open the page in Safari to browse further. Price: $1.99 Siri OK, Siri isn’t technically an app, but it's still worth a mention. Siri is an intelligent personal assistant installed on the iPhone 4S. Like a real personal assistant, you can ask Siri questions and it will perform tasks on your iPhone or provide you with answers. You can ask Siri for restaurant recommendations, directions, business details and web searches. To access Siri on an iPhone, hold down the Home button until “How can I help you?” appears on the screen. Siri is currently only available on the iPhone 4S. Price: FREE (pre-installed on iPhone 4S) AroundMe When you’re in unfamiliar territory and hunger strikes, you want to get cash, or you need to find a gas station, the AroundMe iPhone app will come to the rescue. Choosing from business categories including banks, bars, drug stores, gas stations, hospitals, hotels, movie theaters, restaurants and taxis, you can find almost anything you need. AroundMe shows you where relevant establishments are located and maps out the route from your current location. You can save the information to your contact list or email it to a friend. Price: FREE. Zillow The Zillow iPhone app takes the hassle out of house-hunting by letting you scout out rental and purchase prices in any neighborhood in the U.S. As well as getting “Zestimate” sale and rental values for any individual home, you can search homes for sale and rent by location, or have a peek at those in the area you’re driving or walking through. If you want a certain-sized apartment, or need to stick to a budget, Zillow can help you find homes using search filters. Save homes for later, share them with friends or show your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Price: FREE Wikipanion As the King of reference websites, a Wikipedia iPhone app is a must for those moments when you just have to find out the answer to something. Wikipanion streamlines Wikipedia access for iPhone users. It contains intelligent features, such as a table of contents browser that knows where you are in the page and bookmarking. You can view your history grouped by last visit and also use the Wiktionary dictionary without leaving your current page. Wikipanion is advert free, so you won’t get noisy pop-ups interrupting your browsing sessions. Price: FREE hannah@zeropaid.com

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

American Prosecutors Censor ZeroPaid Reporter!

Drew Wilson — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 23:03:59 +0000

While over one hundred thousand websites and millions of people were taking a stand against a potential American censorship by copyright regime thanks to SOPA and PIPA, ZeroPaid's very own Drew Wilson, for the first time, has officially become a victim of censorship by copyright.

The BBC is reporting that one-click hoster MegaUpload was shut down over piracy accusations. From the report:

Federal prosecutors have accused it of costing copyright holders more than $500m (£320m) in lost revenue. The firm says it was diligent in responding to complaints about pirated material. Investigators denied a link to recent protests against proposed piracy laws, according to the Wall Street Journal. The US Justice Department said that Megaupload's two co-founders Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz, and Mathias Ortmann were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand along with two other employees of the business at the request of US officials. It added that three other defendants were still at large. "This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime," said a statement posted on its website.

Back in 2010, when authorities and the content industries were trying to cut off payment processes to MegaUpload, MegaUpload spoke to ZeroPaid, saying in response to being called a rogue website, “Megaupload is a legitimate business operating within the boundaries of the law. In five years of operation we have not been sued by a single content owner. If the RIAA or MPAA would have legal grounds they would have taken us to court by now. We suggest that they attack us within the legal system and stop labeling us until they have something to show.” That apparently doesn't seem to matter much at this point with the owners of the site being arrested and the website forced offline. The question is, where does that leave MegaUpload's users? I, for one, have used MegaUpload to spread my music around. Under my DJ name, DJ Frozen IceCube, I've used the site on numerous occasions to allow access to my own personal music I've made. Examples of this include my tracks Kinda Distracted, Phantoms of London and Constructing Light. All of these tracks and more were posted to MegaUpload - a site now shut down by American prosecutors. For years, I have been following cases of censorship by copyright. I've advocated that copyright abuses are a major problem that shouldn't be ignored. Now, as of today, I am officially a victim of censorship by copyright. While I can easily find other one-click hosters to host my music, that does not fix the underlying issue I now have with American authorities. American authorities, plain and simple, are censoring artists who have legally produced and uploaded their music for free for others to listen to. This action is blatantly anti-competitive in that if I independently upload my music, I am under the threat of having my music censored under the guise of copyright infringement. Make no mistake, I am far from the first victim and I certainly will not be the last. The content industry will not stop censoring legitimate free speech until the competition is strangled and destroyed and only they have the exclusive power to decide who can reach an audience and who can not. To add insult to injury, they will use government resources, and therefore, taxpayers money, to push their anti-competitive agenda. I am Drew Wilson, I am a reporter and music producer, and I am now officially a victim of America's censorship by copyright tactics. 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.

Opinion – What SOPA Means for a Non-US Citizen

Drew Wilson — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 22:26:39 +0000

SOPA heads for a vote tomorrow. There's no question what kind of damage it could do to internet companies, users of the internet, jobs and the economy within the United States. Drew Wilson offers a perspective on what SOPA means as a citizen of a country outside the United States.

BoingBoing is noting that today is the last day for US citizens to have their voices heard before the legislation is brought to a vote. SOPA - (Stop Online Piracy Act) is basically enacting a sort of "Great Firewall of America". This is named after China's famous internet censorship known as the Great Firewall of China. SOPA The term, "Great Firewall of America" is especially appropriate given what the legislation is really about - censoring the internet. If someone wants to take down their competition, all they have to do is secretively go to a government body and complain that the website is infringing on copyright. That can set the wheels in motion to have the website simply vanish off the internet - all over a single, unproven claim of infringement. Proponents say that this is merely to stop rampant piracy, but for the end-user, it means little more than an inconvenience. We were one of the first websites to discuss ways for users to bi-pass, circumvent and defeat such censorship (some more effective than others). Unfortunately, defeating American censorship is pretty much an end-user game. For websites, trying to avoid being censored is a completely different story short of moving servers and domain names offshore to a free speech friendly country. Knowing this, I am proud that ZeroPaid participated in the American day of censorship and I thank Chris, Jorge and Jared for having this website a participant on such an important issue. We took a stand and said government mandated censorship on the internet without critical oversight is wrong. A lot of the concern, in spite of all of the ways Americans can avoid censorship, still revolves around the negative effects of the US end-user. What is discusses less, however, is the negative effects SOPA would have on non-US citizens and why it's bad for the US. Not to sound egotistical, but I am personally an excellent example of this. What SOPA Would Mean for Me I am a non-US citizen residing outside of the US. I am a journalist who reports on copyright, privacy, technology and all things related to the best of my ability. ZeroPaid, here, is a US-based website. Since I contribute a lot of my time and effort to a US-based website, that means the inherent value of the website goes up (given that an additional staff member working to make the website better means the value of the website goes up). More content on the main page means more traffic to the website. More traffic to the website more or less means more advertisement revenue. A number of these advertisements advertise for US companies. This means that not only is there additional revenue for ZeroPaid, but also for a number of these other websites as well. All of these companies would then be contributing to the US economy. Really simple web economics, really. Now, SOPA comes in to the picture. Knowing that nothing more than a simple accusation can theoretically remove a website from the internet, I personally get concerned; especially knowing that I've had my fair share of questioning the motives and actions of the entertainment industry. I do what any rational person, who has contributed to the US economy from the outside, does: ask what sort of assurance the web administrator has that the website I work for isn't a case of "here today, gone tomorrow". If SOPA is passed, the honest answer that a web administrator residing in the US ultimately is, there is nothing the administrator can offer that can guarantee the security of the websites existence. Even if the website was moved completely offshore, the administrator is still in the US jurisdiction. What US authorities and lobbyists can do is anyone's guess for the foreseeable future theoretically speaking. The SOPA Effect on Others I wouldn't be alone in this. I'm sure there are thousands, if not, more, people in the same boat as me. They work for a US website and now their website can theoretically be targeted maliciously and censored. They would then be unable to contribute to the US economy just like me. The websites existence is just one bad review, one troll or one user posted link away from being terminated. People such as myself would have two choices should SOPA pass, either choose to stick it out and hope that, by luck or chance, won't be the next website targeted by US censors, or look for a website that has as few connections to the US as possible. Some people do require that sense of stability and may choose to leave based on lack of technical assurance that the website won't be censored or removed. So, even before a single website is removed, SOPA is harming the US economy. Once the entertainment lobby, several over corporate entities and who knows what else starts ordering the takedown of numerous websites, the threat will become real for many non-US citizens. Non-US citizens will be able to fully appreciate the type of threat the legislation has whether they want to believe it or not. Some might choose to stay on the website they work for or freak out and leave for a non-US website. In other words, whether the website is censored or not, the damage on the US continues. Follow the Legislation "Leader" We've seen it with the Three Strikes law and we've seen if through the DMCA (re: TPP). Once one country enacts a draconian copyright law, entertainment lobbyists use it as a license to pressure other countries to enact similar legislation. If SOPA is passed, then other countries would face pressure from these major corporations. Some would likely bow to pressure immediately while other countries would resist and hold out for a while. This is the next immediate threat to non-US citizens. While there is the direct impact of having job losses due to a tough censorship regime, the second is the threat of the local government enacting similar (or worse) laws. The Effect on Piracy Websites are being censored on the whim of a single complaint. Proponents say that this legislation is needed to stop rampant piracy and that those who question the legislation based on censorship concerns are ignoring the serious implications of piracy. I'd like to explain how the issue of piracy in the face of this legislation will work in the real world. Websites outside the US would start getting blocked. OK, what to hardcore pirates do when this happens? They circumvent it. We already covered 8 ways pirates could theoretically accomplish this. These methods existed before SOPA was the talk of the town. There will be an arms race to beat the censors should this legislation pass with increasingly more sophisticated way to defeat censorship. Failing this, there would likely be ways of sharing IP addresses for servers. We know how successful private BitTorrent websites are and it's very likely that success in a similar method of file-sharing is entirely possible. If ISPs started enacting protocol blocking, traffic encryption would be presented as a way to bipass such restrictions at the ISP level. With some back and forth, it'll likely get to the point where, at best, the ISP will see a lot of traffic from certain users, but they wouldn't know exactly what it is for because it's heavily scrambled. In short, the effect SOPA would have on piracy is zero - zero, zilch, nothing. Let me reiterate my point concisely: through SOPA, for the price of lost jobs, increase is restraint on free speech, an economy that would be more vulnerable than before, a destroyed reputation of being the world leader in human rights like never before, and the destruction of innovation used to make the US compete better in the global economy, the net gain is absolutely nothing. As a content creator and producer of music, I say SOPA is very bad news for everyone. I am against it because in this day and age, the loss of freedom, the economy and jobs in general is something I wouldn't wish on anyone. We need to look forward, not drive the traditionally strongest economy into the stone age just to keep a handful of maladaptive corporations happy. Website people can use to join the cause of stopping American censorship [Americancensorship.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.

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.

A Response to Don Henley on the PROTECT IP Act

Drew Wilson — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:45:43 +0000

It almost sounds silly that someone could possibly salvage the PROTECT IP Act at this point in time. Still, that doesn't stop some people from trying to pass off the PROTECT IP act as something that would actually do anything at all to stop piracy. We'd like to respond to this opinion with some counter-arguments of our own.

There's still debate around whether or not the PROTECT IP Act should be passed. While some have taken the viewpoint that it's simply a violation of free speech, among other things, we've taken the arguments against the Act one step further and provided 8 ways to circumvent such a law in the US. To date, no one has stepped forward and provided an explanation why all 8 methods would not work against the Act. In my opinion, showing that the Act would never even accomplish any of the goals it sets out to accomplish is really the ultimate trump card for proponents of the act (as a bonus, it's technically a neutral point of view). Don Henley recently wrote an opinion piece trying to support the Act. We'll say this right off the bat, Henley failed completely to show how the Act would stop piracy, only that the Act somehow magically provides the tools necessary to stop piracy. This pretty much amounts to wishful thinking at this stage, but it was amusing (and sad) to read about him trying to sell the Act as a great idea. Here's his opening remarks in his opinion piece.

If there is any question about the need for the United States to crack down on foreign websites engaged in criminal commerce, one need only enter keywords such as "MP3," "DVDScreener," or "Oxycontin" into popular search engines and scroll through the countless pages of site listings and sponsored ads.

You know you've lived to see it all when you see someone like me, someone who isn't even a US citizen, finding himself explaining how copyright law works to a US copyright maximalist. If one is seeing such things in the "popular search engines", it means those who are responsible for enforcing the DMCA haven't been doing their job. I'm sure Google would rightly point out that if there is an infringing link on their search results, all the rights holders have to do is file a DMCA complaint against the search engine and the links quickly get removed. Rights holders have been using the DMCA in the past and it's possible to see messages that point out that some results have been taken down under the DMCA via Google. Maybe rights holders actually don't care that infringing links can be found on Google and that's why they are there in the first place. If some people's experiences on YouTube are anything to go by, you don't even have to prove you are the rights holder in the first place to take something down on a Google owned website. The US has a DMCA law, use it and don't complain if you think links are being missed. In another point, Henley makes the following comment:

Theft of American products and ideas is no longer the hobby of teenagers with laptops; it's big business, as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative warns in a recent report on the world's most notorious illicit markets. And they're not just stealing movies and music; they are stealing America's jobs and future.

The problem here is that the US entertainment industry was established thanks to piracy. Just ask Lawrence Lessig. I think Henley would be ignoring history if he thinks that piracy started as a "hobby of teenagers with laptops". Moreover, downloading of music and other such content has been going on way before laptops were considered a replacement to the desktop computer. Personally, I think if piracy destroyed American jobs, they would have been destroyed by now. Instead, we live in a world where recycled movies are still being made, bad music is still being played on mainstream radio and games still being created so that you have to buy more expensive computers to see every lousy shard of 3D animation or face having the game crash your computer. Now, before Henley thinks of saying something like, "well, look at the movie industry and all the jobs being lost!", I encourage him to look at the problem of Hollywood's outsourcing habit first. Henley also goes so far as to try and push what are probably made up numbers to begin with:

Criminal foreign websites trafficking in American arts and entertainment products cost the U.S. economy $58 billion annually, including more than 373,000 lost American jobs, $16 billion in lost earnings, plus $2.6 billion in lost federal, state and local government tax revenue, according to the Institute for Policy Innovation.

Henley might have one cherry picked study that tries saying this, but we'll counter this with not one, not two, but three studies that would beg to differ. Those three are only scratching the surface of a large body of research in this area that says that file-sharing and p2p activity either have a net positive effect on the industry or have no effect on the creative industry at all. Sorry Henley, try again. Don't worry, he does:

Stealing American entertainment products and counterfeiting our goods are federal crimes. Search engines are the No. 1 way people find rogue websites. Yet as Congress debates legislation that would enable U.S. law enforcement to protect American businesses and consumers from foreign criminal enterprises on the Web, search engines such as Google are heavily lobbying lawmakers to allow the companies to continue to list illegal websites in search results. This loophole would render the bill virtually useless.

It seems convenient to use vague terminology here. It needs to be pointed out that non-commercial copyright infringement is a civil matter, not a criminal matter. I challenge Henley to cite the laws that say downloading an MP3 online for free is a criminal offense (and not a civil matter) and cite court cases that agree with this. Sorry Henley, using vague terminology in an effort to confuse matters doesn't work with me. In addition, Henley suggests that search engines are lobbying congress to be able to list "illegal" websites in their search results. Since Henley completely failed to do so, I think he should cite when this type of lobbying occurred. At what point is Google saying, "We wish to display illegal websites in our results"? I don't recall hearing search engine spokespeople say something to that effect, maybe Henley would like to elaborate on that. On the contrary, though, we are more than aware of Google co-operating with rights holders. Besides the DMCA complaints, I do distinctly recall Google agreeing to filter web results for pirated material back in January. Was this somehow forgotten in Henley's comments? Maybe. So we hope the link jogs his memory. Henley goes on to try attacking a few opponents to the bill:

Critics of this pending legislation need to be honest about the company they keep and why they essentially aid and abet these criminal endeavors. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a civil liberties group, claims such a bill would "break the Internet," while Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt says it sets "a disastrous precedent" for freedom of speech. No one has the freedom to commit or abet crimes on the Internet. Stopping crime on the Internet is not, as EFF says, "censorship." There is no First Amendment right to infringe intellectual property rights.

To Henley's credit, he actually did offer citations in this particular instance. Still, just looking at this paragraph, one can easily identify this as a straw man attack. Henley acknowledged that the EFF said that this could break the internet and that this could be a slippery slope of introducing censorship. Then, he suddenly says that there's no First Amendment right to infringe intellectual property rights. Sure, Henley could say that there is no First Amendment right to infringe, but that is not what the EFF is saying. Henley is exaggerating and distorting what the EFF is saying in the first place. If you are wondering what did the EFF actually said, then let's take a look at the very link Henley is referring to:

Free speech is vitally important to democracy, which is why the government is restricted from suppressing speech except in very specific, narrowly-tailored situations. But this bill is the polar opposite of narrow — not only in the broad way that it tries to define a site "dedicated to infringing activities," but also in the solution that it tries to impose — a block on a whole domain, and not just the infringing part of the site.

In other words, what is to fear here is the fact that an entire website would be blocked. What if only one page contains infringing material and the rest is perfectly legal? What would happen if that website is censored too? Then legal free speech is technically being infringed. This is not about trying to bundle infringing material into the First Amendment, but protecting free speech. I think, in this case, Henley needs to attack the argument, not the straw man. Henley continues with the following:

Search engines, including Google, already make filtering tools that block references and links to websites featuring pornographic and other content considered unsuitable or offensive. The technology is there, but the will of some companies is not. It seems that their real agenda is to avoid the loss of advertising, "pay per click" and other revenue if these sites were shut down. After all, Google is reportedly bracing for a $500 million fine for doing just that — accepting untold advertising dollars from illegal online pharmacies.

To address the first part, Henley is referring to Google's Family Safety tools. While, on the surface, Henley sounds like he's making a reasonable argument, 5 seconds of research completely obliterates the credibility of this point. If you look on that page and click on the FAQ, you'll see the following:

How does Google protect kids from sexual content and other content that’s inappropriate for them? Google’s SafeSearch screens for sites that contain inappropriate content and eliminates them from search results. While no filter is 100% accurate, Google’s filter uses advanced technology to check keywords, phrases, and URLs. Users can modify and lock their search settings by selecting the Settings on the top right corner of the Google homepage and choosing Search Settings. Scroll down to SafeSearch Filtering and click “Lock SafeSearch”.

In other words, it filters for keywords among other things. I think that if you ask someone who knows a lot about filtering technology, they'll probably acknowledge that a keyword filter is pretty much useless in stopping piracy. Keyword filtering also bares little resemblance to what is being proposed here in the PROTECT IP Act - DNS filtering. ISP level DNS filtering and user level keyword filtering are two completely different pieces of filtering technology. I don't think Google can compel ISPs to block a whole lot of websites. besides, I would imagine that if Google were to be put in a position where they think certain websites should be removed from the internet, then they'd probably refer the matter to police. To address the second part of this paragraph of Henley's, I think it's a little absurd to insinuate that Google makes it's money solely on pirated material. I would imagine that people use Google for way more than just piracy related activities (i.e. solving a computer problem, shopping, video game help, and looking for medical related information when they should be consulting doctors). Suggesting that Google runs on pirated material through their ads is simply presumptuous at best and a flat out lie at worst. To name one example, last I checked, ThePirateBay doesn't use Google Adsense. Party Poker? Sure. Google Adsense? Not to my knowledge these days. Henley then goes on to say the following:

Proposed solutions aren't radical; they are common-sense extensions of current legal powers. As with other federal crimes, authorities have the ability to seize ill-gotten gains along with the tools used to commit the crimes. But most criminals register their domain names overseas, forcing U.S. law enforcement officials to play a frustrating online cat-and-mouse game. In order to take down these illegal sites, they need cooperation from U.S. Internet service providers and search engines. American firms can and should block these criminal sites, and U.S. ad networks and credit card companies should cut off money going to them. The "Protect IP Act" would give law enforcement the tools to accomplish this goal.

Like I said in the beginning, the proposed solutions are easily by-passed. So if common sense was put in to the process, the PROTECT-IP act would have been scrapped by now. In addition, what's to stop the so-called "cat and mouse" game in the PROTECT-IP Act? With the PROTECT-IP Act, a domain is censored, and a new domain starts up. Does the name MAFIAAFire mean anything to you? What will really happen is that before, domains are seized by the FBI, knocking websites offline causing the operators to use alternate domain names (hence the cat and mouse suggestion). After the PROTECT-IP, domains will be censored, causing website operators to re-locate to new domains (hence the cat and mouse domain). Henley then closes with the following:

Online thieves are stealing American creativity, ingenuity and innovation. They are killing American jobs. Members of Congress should not be taken in by special interest agendas disguised as First Amendment claims, or they themselves will be as culpable of abetting theft as the rogue sites and companies that support them.

So really, he's using everything that can be so easily debunked and concluding that if politicians don't legislate his way, they are aiding and abetting criminals. I think before Henley writes anything more on this topic, he should go out and see how things work in the real world. If he had points grounded in reality, he might be able to have something convincing. For now, I'll just say this about Henley's article: Completely debunked. 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.

Porn Industry Sues the Blind

Drew Wilson — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:37:40 +0000

He's one of thousands in the lawsuit campaign against file-sharers, but he seems to be an unlikely candidate. He's legally blind and too busy with his personal life to secure his WiFi connection. Unfortunately for him, he's also unable to afford to fight the case and might be forced to settle anyway.

For years, we here at ZeroPaid have been saying over and over again that an IP address doesn't necessarily connect to a guilty party of any alleged wrong-doing online. This is for a number of reasons which does include the possibility of WiFi hacking. It's very likely that was the case in this instance. According to Seattle Weekly, a blind man is amongst the thousands targeted in a mass BitTorrent lawsuit because he allegedly downloaded a porn movie. If you think this is odd that a blind person would be downloading porn movies, the accused would definitely agree. From the article:

He stood accused of having illegally downloaded a copyrighted film five months earlier, at precisely 6:03 a.m. on the morning of January 27. The name of the Imperial Enterprises movie he purportedly purloined wasn't mentioned until four pages later. Though printed in tiny italic font in a court filing, it practically leapt off the page: Tokyo Cougar Creampies. Yet when Mrs. Doe set eyes on that ignominious title, she couldn't help but crack a smile at the absurdity of the situation. Her husband is legally blind, with vision roughly 1/100th of that of a person with normal sight. He is physically incapable of watching any film, this particular porno included. "To be honest, it's a little ridiculous," Doe 2,057 says with a rueful chuckle. "My movie-watching ability is nonexistent. My kids watch movies, but they are 4 and 6, so they don't watch porn either. Well, hopefully they don't."

This is just, yet, another case of how a mass lawsuit campaign can go wrong. For those that have followed these stories for years, this case might remind them of how the RIAA sued dead people for copyright infringement. There might also be the reminder of the case where the RIAA sued a family that didn't even own a computer. As long as rights-holders erroneously believe that an IP address always links to the person downloading copyright infringing material, false accusations will always be a running theme of any lawsuit campaign or three strikes law. Rights holders might as well open up a phone book, point to random people and say, "sue" because that tactic is just as accurate. Sadly, with the case of the blind person today, he very likely won't have a choice but to settle due to financial constraints. Going before a judge would cost thousands - and if he lost, hundreds of thousands. How could this have happened? The suspicion amongst the accused is WiFi hacking. They apparently live in a densely populated area. Being unable to find time to secure their connection, their network was open to hacking. I think that as long as these lawsuit campaigns continue, we'll keep getting stories like this. There are rights holders out there that constantly want to sue file-sharers into non-existence, but they often have a habit of not caring who the intended target is in the end. Sometimes, the target is completely innocent of any wrong doing. When the target is innocent, it really sends the message that rights holders are simply suing completely random people. [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.