Legal

The many legal issues raised as media digitises

Wikinews Identifies US Congress Wikipedia Cheats
Wikinews, the collaborative online journalism project spawned from Wikipedia, has been digging up more dirt on the Wikipedia edits made by Capitol Hill staffers.
Last week, the scandal broke about how staff using computers connected to the US senate’s network had been airbrushing out unflattering facts about their bosses while adding unsavoury titbits about political foes in over 1,000 changes to related Wikipedia articles.
Amongst the spinning and doctoring was the removal of a campaign promise by Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., that he would serve only four terms, as was the detailed description of a bill introduced by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., designed to make it more difficult for gay parents to visit their children in hospitals.
Naturally, dirty tricks, slurs and insults loomed large, with the entry for the Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. saying that he had been voted “the most annoying senator by his peers.”
Hot on their trail, the meticulous volunteers at Wikinews collected every Senate IP which had ever been edited on Wikipedia (up to February 3) and examined where the IPs came, what was edited and what the edits comprised of.
Someone (presumably Wikinews contributors) then sent emails to specific Senators’ offices and noted down the IP addresses that were included in the headers of the autoresponder emails.
Armed with this information, the Wikinews sleuths were then able to look back at Wikipedia edit histories and figure out which office was responsible for each edit.
The full name’n’shame article detailing who edited what can be seen here: Wikinews
(Unfortunately, edits coming from the US House of Representatives were harder to uniquely trace as they came through a proxy server, with one IP address covering all offices.)
Open, collaborative information projects like Wikipedia and Wikinews have been welcomed by Internet activists keen to make unbiased information freely available, but the very nature of the project makes it wide open to abuse (as one pundit commented, “The information on your screen may be only as good as the most recent users’ motives.”)
But in this case, the attempts by Capital Hill staff to fiddle about on the Web and rewrite political history backfired dramatically and only made things worse for them.
And we rather like that.
Wikinews via BoingBoing
9 February, 2006
Anyone Got A Job For Free Culture IP Lawyer?
Inga Chernyak, until recently, had a legal clerk job at an IP law firm in New York City. On the 26 January she was called in to the firms HR department and fired.
Why does that make news in Digital-Lifestyles?
Her claim is that she was told it was because she’d appeared in an article in the New York’s Village Voice, discussing the Lawrence Lessig-inspired Free Culture movement. The article came out in the Village Voice on 10 January. She was fired on the 26th.
She also assets that they told her that her “views about what the firm does were incompatible with…what the firm does.” Her views on the expansion of Copyright laws are that they place overt restrictions on the population as a whole.
There may be those who think that it’s pretty obvious that is you work in an IP firm; wanting to train as an IP lawyer; you hold views that IP law is over restrictive; then have your name and photo featured in an article that starts by describing how to circumvent CD DRM protection and are a founder of NYU chapter of the Free Culture movement – you’re going to end up in trouble said IP law firm. Others cry foul.
Given how the blogging world works, I’d imagine that this incident will far from harm her career, and as she says in her own words, “as a member of the Free Culture movement, and a young woman of 19 without children to support, I can afford to take this blow in the name of progress.”
Take a stand against DRM? Get fired from your day job
2 February, 2006
First UK Filesharers Sued By BPI
News has broken that two men in the UK have been found liable for file sharing their music. The first ruling of its kind in the UK.
Both men who were ruled against are, as yet, unnamed. The details that are know are – one is a postman, father of two and living in Brighton; the other living in King’s Lynn.
King’s Lynn, as we shall call him, has been instructed to pay £5,000 ‘down-payment’ on costs and damages, Brighton must pay £1,500. Both have been instructed to stop filesharing.
Having been found liable, the two are now exposed to the BPI’s legal fees. Given the City law firms the BPI use, where it’s not unusual to pay £200/hours for their services, it’s going to be an expensive business. BPI have stated that “Total costs are estimated at £13,500 and damages are expected to take the bill even higher.”
Each defense used a different argument. The first, that the BPI had no direct evidence of infringement; the second on the grounds that he was unaware that what he was doing was illegal and did not seek to gain financially.
The second case was dismissed by Judge Justice Lawrence Collins declaring, “Ignorance is not a defence,” which we thought was known by one and all. Given the weakness of this defence, we imagine that this person must have defended themselves. Details of argument against the first were no disclosed.
The names of the people who were sued haven’t been released by the BPI. When we asked for their names, we were told they weren’t to be made available as, “we don’t want to put them through anymore stress.” A bit strange when the stress they’re under, which we imagine to be pretty considerable, would have been caused by the BPI’s actions.
This route, taking legal action against members of the public, has been well trod in the US. Reaction there has been varied from Hurrah! from the majority of the US music business – to Boo! from a large number of citizens, who in reaction have threatened not to buy music from the major music companies.
The BPI is obviously taking this opportunity to pressure the 51 file-sharers that they have in their sights, urging them settle. We suspect that many will take the hint.
27 January, 2006
BBC Open News Archive Goes Online
The BBC has announced its Open News Archive, making archive news reports freely available to the UK public to download and use for free in their own creative works.
Included amongst the initial offering of around 80 online reports will be footage from important events like the fall of the Berlin Wall, Beijing’s Tiananmen Square protest, the Poll Tax riots, the Piper Alpha disaster and Nelson Mandela’s release.
Made available under the terms of the recently-launched Creative Archive Licence, the footage can be viewed, downloaded, edited and mixed by UK residents – so long as it’s for non-commercial programming (there’s also several other caveats that budding film makers should read first here.)
The clips will be made available in QuickTime, Windows Media, MPEG1 and MP3 formats to ensure a wide audience, and will cover stories from the past 50 years.
Helen Boaden, Director, BBC News, said: “This trial is an important step in allowing us to share with our audiences the extraordinary news archive which the BBC has recorded over the years. We look forward to getting their reaction.”
Paul Gerhardt, project director of the Creative Archive Licence Group, added, “The BBC’s telling of those stories is part of our heritage, and now that the UK public have the chance to share and keep them we’re keen to know how they will be used.”
The BBC already offer nearly a hundred clips in their Radio 1 Superstar VJ archive, and are expected to be releasing further content over its websites in the coming months.
BBC Open News Archive
4 January, 2006
Huge US Music Downloading Fine Upheld
A US federal appeals court has upheld the mammoth $22,500 (£12,760, €18,930) fine slapped on a 29 year old Chicago mother caught illegally distributing songs over the Internet.
Cecilia Gonzalez’s unsuccessful appeal against a music industry copyright lawsuit will no doubt delight music industry lawyers, who have already filed against thousands of computer users.
The three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago weren’t interested in Ms Gonzalez’ arguments that her Internet activities were permitted under US copyright laws.
After Ms Gonzalez rejected an earlier proposed settlement from music companies of about $3,500 (£1,950 €2,950), a federal judge later filed a summary judgement ordering her to shell out $750 (£425) for each of 30 songs she was accused of illegally distributing over the Internet.
The mother of five contended she had downloaded songs to determine what she liked enough to buy at retail, adding that she and her husband regularly buy music CDs, with over 250 albums in their collection.
The appeal panel weren’t impressed, pointing out that because Ms Gonzalez didn’t delete the songs she hadn’t decided to buy, she could have been liable for the 1000+ songs found on her computer.
“A copy downloaded, played, and retained on one’s hard drive for future use is a direct substitute for a purchased copy,” the judges wrote, adding that her defence that she downloaded fewer songs than many other computer users “is no more relevant than a thief’s contention that he shoplifted only 30 compact discs, planning to listen to them at home and pay later.”
Ms Gonzalez’s case was part of first wave of civil lawsuits filed by record companies and their trade organisation, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), back in September 2003.
“The law here is quite clear,” table-thumped Jonathan Lamy, a senior vice-president for the Washington-based RIAA. “Our goal with all these anti-piracy efforts is to protect the ability of the music industry to invest in the bands of tomorrow and give legal online services a chance to flourish.”
And make lots of money for themselves, of course.
RIAA
12 December, 2005
Are Media Owners Trying To Hijack Terror Legislation?
The digital rights campaigning group, Open Rights Group, reports that the music industry is lobbying MEPs to co-opt the EU Data Retention legislation currently being debated by the European Parliament.
Music industry body, the Creative and Media Business Alliance (CMBA), wants data-snooping legislation aimed at the prevention of terrorism to be made available for the prosecution of any crime, such as copyright infringement.
The move has been condemned by the Open Rights Group and other civil liberties groups across Europe, with campaigners calling on the Alliance’s members – which include industry bigwigs like Sony BMG, Warner Music, Disney, and EMI – to retract their demands.
The Data Retention draft framework was originally cooked up by Sweden, Ireland, France and the UK, aiming at “the prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of serious criminal offences such as terrorism and organised crime” by forcing telecommunications and Internet service providers to retain ‘traffic data’ (i.e. information about your phone calls and Internet activities.)
Keen to exploit the legislation for their own commercial gain, the CMBA has demanded that this data should be made available for the prosecution of any crime – e.g. illegal music file sharing – and not just serious organised crime and terrorism.
Coupled with the upcoming IPRED2 legislation (which creates new, Europe-wide criminal offences for intellectual property infringement), campaigners fear that we could end up with a situation where the music industry would be able to pursue criminal court copyright prosecutions entirely at the cost of the taxpayer.
Worryingly, the Open Rights Group reports that the both the Data Retention and IPRED2 directives are being “fast-tracked” through the EU by short-circuiting normal legislative processes.
This means that there will only be one reading in the European Parliament, instead of the normal two, with sources from within the Parliamentary system indicating that some MEPs aren’t aware that the usual democratic process is being bypassed.
A tight timetable means that MEPs are only going to have a couple of days to assess the Data Retention proposal with the final vote occurring on the 13 December.
“The passing of the Data Retention directive would be a disaster not just for civil liberties and human rights in Europe”, said Open Rights Group director Suw Charman, “it would also put a substantial financial burden on telcos and ISPs which would be passed on to the consumer either in the form of raised bills or through government subsidies funded by the taxpayer.”
Ian Brown, of the Open Rights Group (not the Stone Roses), said: “The British government claimed that Data Retention was essential in the fight against terrorism and serious crime, but it has now become clear that groups with commercial interests have their eye on the same data. Charles Clarke cannot continue to pretend that this legislation has been drafted purely for reasons of national security.”
Gus Hosein, Senior Fellow at Privacy International, was equally unimpressed: “The EU has been claiming that data retention was some urgent policy response to terrorist attacks. But they are carefully drafting this legislation to ensure that it can be used for all purposes under the sun.”
“Ironically, the EU seems to be going at it alone: even the U.S. Bush Administration is not proposing such a ludicrous policy, despite the strong lobbying by Hollywood.” he added.
There are fears that if the CMBA is successful, the increased number of demands for access could affect the usefulness of the legislation as an anti- terrorism tool.
The Open Rights Group argue that if British record labels set up prosecution ‘production lines’ like their American counterparts, the system could collapse under the strain, clogging up reasonable and legitimate enquiries into genuine terrorist or serious crime activity.
Today, Sjoera Nas, Board Member of EDRi and Co-Director of Bits of Freedom presented a 58,000 signatures petition to the Chairman of the Committee, Green Party MEPs, Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats.
Nas commented, “Last minute negotiations with representatives of the European Council have lead to what we feared the worst – a draconian directive that flies in the face of our recommendations.”
“We can only hope that the European Parliament will come to its senses and realise that they cannot turn Europe into a surveillance society overnight without throwing away all human rights,” she added.
Open Rights Group
24 November, 2005
BitTorrent Signs Anti-Piracy Agreement With MPAA
P2P network, BitTorrent has signed an agreement with the Motion Picture Association of America to collaborate on stopping Internet piracy.
After a press conference, a joint release was released by BitTorrent founder and CEO Bram Cohen and MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman announcing that BitTorrent have agreed to remove all links directing users to pirated content owned by the seven MPAA member companies.
The agreement will effectively prevent bittorrent.com from locating unlicensed versions of popular movies, making it harder for freeloaders to find online illegal copies of films.
“BitTorrent is an extremely efficient publishing tool and search engine that allows creators and rights holders to make their content available on the Internet securely,” Cohen said.
“BitTorrent Inc. discourages the use of its technology for distributing films without a license to do so. As such, we are pleased to work with the film industry to remove unauthorised content from BitTorrent.com’s search engine,” he added.
Thousand of BitTorrent fans the world over will be clenching their fists and shouting “Traitor! You’re doing deals with the Devil,” while other more balanced, less angry-types will be saying “Smart move Bram, you’ve built a technology that they cannot stop and the fact they’ve done a deal with you proves that. Hey and you’re not getting your shirt sued off your back.”
In September, Cohen revealed that his company had raked in $8.75 million in venture funding to develop commercial distribution tools for media companies, and the MPAA deal looks to be part of a strategy to make the technology more attractive to Hollywood moguls – no doubt with an eye to future lucrative movie download deals.
With an estimated 45 million users, the BitTorrent technology pioneered by Cohen does its clever stuff by assembling digital files from separate bits of data downloaded from computer users all across the Internet.
The decentralised nature of technology makes it the easiest, most convenient way to fill your hard drive with dodgy movies galore, while making it harder for Hollywood to find and identify the movie swappers.
In an attempt to stop the piracy, the MPAA has been slapping lawsuits around like confetti during the last year, successfully closing down 90% of targeted sites using the BitTorrent protocol for illegal distribution of movies.
The MPAA claims that the film industry lost $3.5 billion to movie piracy last year, with a recent study predicting the figure to jump to $5.4 billion this year. The MPAA claim these losses are excluding revenue lost through online file-swapping, so the true figure could be even higher (although other will say the figures are already gloriously exaggerated).
With tears welling up in their eyes, the MPAA said that film copying hurts hundreds of thousands of employees dependent on the movie industry, including sound and lighting techies, carpenters, cinema staff, video store employees and quite probably the popcorn sales assistant too.
But not, we suspect, the fatcat industry bigwigs.
BitTorrent
23 November, 2005
TiVo: PSP/ iPod Downloads Planned
TiVo have announced the release of new software, slated for the first quarter of 2006 that will let owners watch recorded television shows on their Sony PSPs and video iPods.
It doesn’t stop does it? Boy, is this technology disruptive.
What’s that sound? The sound of TV legal types rubbing their hands together as TiVo’s press release hit the ‘wires’.
TiVo’s software will enable subscribers to easily transfer recorded television programming, in MPEG-4 format. Other capabilities include auto-sync, letting TiVo users choose if they want new recordings of their favorite programs transferred to their portable devices via their PC. Recharging content onto their devices overnight, ready for the next days commute. It is expected to be priced as a one off of around $30 (~£17, ~€25).
This development is a further blow to TV network schedulers and their much-relied on conventional prime time programmes. This theory is torn apart when mobile viewers are able to watch programmes recorded the previous night, on the go.
The US networks are unlikely to take this lying down. Companies like ABC (part of media giant Disney) have been keen to generate additional revenue from download deals of their premium shows like Desperate Housewives – as offered by Apple through their online store, to their video iPod.
This TiVo development sees that particular rug being pulled from under them, and we suspect that they won’t be won over by TiVo’s promises to employ “watermark” technologies on programs transferred to a portable device.
TiVo’s share price has initially climbed, having faltered due to the perceived weakness in TiVo capabilities for both dual recording and HD use.
Some commentators are warning of the practical problems, expecting only the technically adept to be able to handle the transfers and pointing out that the enhancements will only be available to a subset of TiVo’s 3.8 million subscribers.
We think that while this could be the case for now, we don’t see this particular genie jumping back in the bottle.
TiVo
22 November, 2005
The Teen View On SonyBMG DRM Woes
We’re really pleased to have Lawrence Dudley writing for us.
Digital-Lifestyles thinks that all too often articles about teenagers are written by people old enough to be their parents. What teenagers are thinking isn’t represented.
Lawrence will give you a point of view that you won’t find in other publications. You see Lawrence _is_ a teenager.
Because Criminals Make the Best Police Officers
A while ago, another teen, Jon Lech Johansen, who was most likely one of those addicted to the Internet, did something that upset a lot of people: He cracked the encryption used to protect DVDs. His actions had a huge impact and a lot of the big movie companies were upset. So much so, that they filed a lawsuit against the then-19 year old.
Imagine then, after the scandal that was SonyBMG’s DRM software which was actually a rootkit, that SonyBMG actually incorporated some open source software (OSS) code in their CDs. And not just any OSS either: It was software written by Jon himself a few years ago.
This leaves SonyBMG in a tricky position: If proven to be correct, they have broken almost every rule in the LGPL, a license used for Open Source Software. This license states that a distributor may not distribute software containing LGPL code without revealing the code’s source. SonyBMG and the suppliers of the DRM software, First4Internet, appear to have failed in doing that, and could end up being penalised for it. My views? How about sending a cool million dollars over to our friend Jon Jen Johansen? I’m sure he could use it to research some new cracks.
The other law other are saying have been broken by SonyBMG, and this is one that could land them in BIG legal difficulties, is The Computer Misuse Act, which contains the following clauses, all of which have been broken by SonyBMG in their keenes for DRM:
- 3.(1) A person is guilty of an offence if
- (a) he does any act which causes an unauthorised modification of the contents of any computer; and SonyBMG certainly caused an unauthorized modification of the computers on which its software was unknowingly installed on. It even installed a security risk.
- (b) at the time when he does the act he has the requisite intent and the requisite knowledge. Well this obviously applies to a company like SonyBMG.
- (2) For the purposes of subsection (1)(b) above the requisite intent is an intent to cause a modification of the contents of any computer and by so doing
- (a) to impair the operation of any computer; it would appear that making it impossible to make legitimate, fair-use copies of CDs an impairment
- (b) to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer; or to me it looks like SonyBMG followed the rule, thinking their program had to break every single clause. Preventing access to data, namely $sys$ named folders, is exactly what SonyBMG did.
- (c) to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data. Again an impairment in the operation of the computer. Again a clause which SonyBMG broke.
There is one interesting little caveat though: The software wasn’t developed by SonyBMG, but by First4Internet, and was only deployed by SonyBMG on their CDs. Whether it will be SonyBMG or First4Internet who will get into trouble over this one remains to be seen, but from my point of view, Sony as a whole has done themselves a lot of damage with this one.
21 November, 2005
Big Problems For Sony Continue, Now EULA
This weekend, there’s been lots of furious chat on blogs and Slashdot about the EULA that comes with SonyBMG’s audio CDs.
An EULA? What’s that? I hear you cry. An End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) is something that has been shipping with software packages for a very long time – the cold-hearted view of them is they impose restrictions on the purchaser while absolving its producers from any liability.
To have an agreement shipping with an _audio CD_ in itself is pretty strange. The EULA may well be related to the software that is shipped on the protected CDs, not the music – but this is now unimportant as the generally held view is that it is for the music.
It certainly has got the goal of a few – but it’s the terms of this 3,000 word EULA that has most up in arms. Some of the highlights/lowlights of it are
- If you move out of the country, you have to delete all your music. The EULA specifically forbids “export” outside the country where you reside.
- If you file for bankruptcy, you have to delete all the music on your computer. Seriously.
- You can’t keep your music on any computers at work. The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a “personal home computer system owned by you.”
The full list is detailed on the EFF site.
All of this builds up on the now huge story of SonyBMG’s choice of software on some of their US released audio CDs. Called XCP, originally designed to ‘assert’ SonyBMG’s rights over their music CD’s, it installs itself on any computer where the audio CD is played. The user of the disk isn’t asked if this is OK, or even told that the software is installing itself. The software then hides itself using something called “rootkit.”
The really big problem for SonyBMG is that virus writers are now using this rootkit exploit to deliverer their viruses.
Many have reacted to RootKit by saying that they feel it is ‘safer’ for them to download their music from unlicensed file sharing services, as they aren’t exposing themselves to unauthorised pieces of software installing on their machines.
SonyBMG have said they will stop selling music CD’s using XCP, but the damage to the Sony name has been done.
It’s all going wrong
A while back Sony, the parent company, had a revelation – that they needed to look outside their Sony Silo and start of embrace open formats. We saw MP3 being supported on their music players, where they’d always insisted on using their propriety content protections scheme ATRAC3. I even saw DivX supported on their DVD players, where DivX had previous been thought of as the content pirates tool.
Sony had (I stress had) started to claw back against Apple and the other companies that they’d been losing out to. As of now, it looks like they’ve slipped even further behind. For goodness sakes, they’ve even got groups of people suggesting Boycott Sony and 3488 have, so far, signed an anti-Sony petition.
Sadly for Sony, it doesn’t end there
In digging through SonyBMG’s code, Finn Matti Nikki has located references to LAME, an open source, MP3 encoder library, within the code used by SonyBMG’s version of the XCP software.
As Matti says, “I’d say this indicates that the executable has been compiled against static LAME library, which happens to be LGPL. I don’t have any further evidence about this, other than lots of data from libmp3lame being included and easy to find.” Let us translate – the LGPL (Lesser General Public License) provides certain freedoms and restrictions in the use of the software covered by it.
These include needing to make the source code to the open-source libraries available and the source code and executable code of their programs.
Without abiding by these rules, they are breaking the licensing terms of the content. Carrying out the exact act they the music companies are loudly decrying in their customer.
Where now for Sony?
SonyBMG have managed to completely undo the small, patient steps that Sony, the hardware business, has been taking to gathering favour with the equipment buying public.
The idea of Sony owning content and hardware businesses always appears to be a great idea – they’d win all around. The reality is turning out to be very different.
There is a tension between the content business, who want to restrict movement of content, and the hardware business that wants to set the purchaser free. Whether a comfortable balance between these can ever be struck is unclear.
What is clear is that it appears that this CD story is nearly out of control for Sony. Someone at the most senior level at Sony needs to grab hold of this and do something radical. Our suggestion for a surefire, credibiliy-straightening maneuver? Reject DRM.
LGLP
SonyBMG on XCP
Wikipedia on LAME
LAME
Slashdot – Sony’s EULA Worse Than Its Rootkit?
14 November, 2005