In the early part of the last decade when they were still the innocent side of 15-years-old, one schoolfriend showed another an Iomega ZIP drive (right) full of ‘warez’ – games and software with a big fat zero written on their price tag.

Having never seen anything like it before, James (as we shall call him for now) became hooked, and quickly began to display a trait inherent in many addicted file-sharers.

“I simply couldn’t get enough,” he told TorrentFreak. “It was more fun downloading and sharing the stuff with all my friends then actually using it or playing the actual games.”

Having become inspired by these simple beginnings, James began chatting with other like-minded people on warez sites and ICQ, going on to share warez via PUBS, FTP-enabled servers conveniently left open by companies with more bandwidth than security sense.

Sharing files wasn’t a simple process back then and James took exception when Napster began dumbing down the process.

“We hated it, simply despised it because it made a mockery of the hard work we put in to obtain all these different warez,” he recalls.

But despite these early bad feelings towards Napster, the future would eventually see James become a facilitator of even easier ways of downloading. Not for just his friends, but for more than a hundred thousand people.

After working his way up to become one of the top members on the GraveyardFXP warez board, James says he became a moderator of DelusionalFXP. It was there, on their IRC channel, that he would meet people whose new project would suck him in and change his life forever. At some point along the line, ‘James’ became better known to his peers as StonyVision, and he was invited to join a new project being set up by, among others, a fellow pirate known as Sk0t.

Under Sk0t’s leadership, a torrent site called Elite Torrents was taking shape and preparing itself for an eventual membership of some 130,000 active users. It would also become the only US-based BitTorrent tracker ever to be busted by the FBI and ICE.

After he’d installed BitComet and began sharing content in February 2004, staff on Elite noticed something very appealing about StonyVision – his impressive upload capability. StonyVision told us he’d “followed instructions” on how to use two instead of the regular one modem his cable connection usually allowed, which gave him business-standard upload speeds. When you’re delivering content on BitTorrent, upload bandwidth is king, and Elite wanted some of Stony’s.

But as file-sharers are often heard to complain, you can never have enough bandwidth, so Stony acquired a 100mbit server at The Planet in Texas and began seeding his files from there. Once around 150 of Elite’s users had grabbed his latest release he’d begin releasing his next torrent, usually the very latest movies. His performance eventually meant that he became a member of staff, later going on to organize other Elite Torrents uploaders.

Of course, StonyVision needed content to share and he wasted no time in getting it directly from source – The Scene. He’d gained access to this elite network through his contacts at DelusionalFXP and ended up adding his own server to something called T.O.P. or “Tower of Power” – 53 dedicated 100mbit servers acting as a single giant RAID FTP piracy site. But still Stony needed more.

“At that point I was on four or five top sites, and my main interest was always movies. I loved movies and still do,” Stony explained. “Since my server was tied up I ended up renting two more, one to race with and another for seeding content on Elite Torrents.”

In common with his more old-school peers, Stony saw himself as something of a Robin Hood, “taking from the rich and giving to Average Joe”, and reveled in the positive feedback left by up to 130,000 Elite Torrents users.

But the environment in the United States had become increasingly unfriendly towards The Scene. The FBI and DoJ’s Operation Fastlink was underway and there was a growing fear that torrent sites would be targeted next. Stony sensed the tension and stepped down from the site’s staff around April 2005. He was 19-years-old – and too late.

Elite Torrents and its operators were already being watched and no amount of IP-address obfuscation would prove effective in hiding Stony or his fellow staffers on the site.

“Truth be told I did hide my IP and was the hardest one to find but [the FBI] used the Patriot Act and came up with an asinine amount of money lost to these companies and the movie industry and labeled me as a possible domestic terrorist who was conspiring to commit copyright infringement,” Stony explains.

“I woke up to banging on the door over and over, the dogs started barking. I got up thinking who’s the asshole banging on my door at 6am? Next thing I know there’s 10+ FBI agents in my house. I started laughing at first – I thought it was a joke – until the reality sunk in.”

It was 25th May 2005 and Operation D-Elite, which was to claim several admins and staff members at Elite Torrents, was underway.

“That was the day of days, I was in total and utter dismay and couldn’t even wrap my head around what had happened. I had no clue what was happening to the others. I lawyered up immediately which in itself is a funny story. I opened up the Yellow Pages, looked under ‘lawyer’ and there it was – an ad with a firm that had dealt with computer crime.

“I think I need a lawyer,” Stony told the gentleman on the other end who inquired “Why?”

“Well, the FBI had just raided my house along with a group they called ICE,” Stony responded.

A few awkward seconds of silence was followed by: “How fast can you get here?”

What came next was mountains of litigation and Stony being told to expect the worst – 5 years in prison. The pressure proved too much and Stony went off the rails, turning to alcohol.

In December 2006 he would learn his fate for the uploading of 53 movies, 6 pieces of software and 10 video games. The government demanded a prison sentence in order to deter others from infringement. To Stony’s huge relief, they didn’t get their way.

“Luckily for me I had the most liberal federal judge there was at the time. I was given a fine of $3,500, 6 months house arrest, community service and 3 years probation in which I was not allowed to touch a computer. I had somehow escaped doing time and the U.S attorney was furious.”

But despite avoiding prison, Stony says that he’s still paid a price.

“It’s been the bane of my existence and yet made me who I am. I continued on a self destructive path for quite some time doing crazy things, still working out, getting in bar fights. Truth be told I’ve been to hell and back, stared the devil in the face with its trillions of dollars of influence (RIAA, MPAA) and laughed and walked away.”

Stony says that confessing to a double felony on job applications hinders him, but the support of a new woman in his life has helped tremendously. So how are things today?

“I of course no longer pirate anything anymore as I’m sure I’m still on numerous watch lists. Its simply fun to look every now and again,” says Stony.

“My story isn’t one of inspiration but one of caution. It could happen to anyone out there. I know people are thinking ‘nah, not me’, but that’s what I thought too and now here we are.”

Stony told us that he recently got back online again with his own computer and was inspired by the huge anti-SOPA and PIPA campaigns.

“Thanks to everyone who spoke out on Internet blackout day. It really did give me goosebumps to see people finally stand up and be heard,” he concludes.

Sk0t’s story and those of his fellow operators and uploaders can be found here and here.

Source: Busted By The FBI: The Life Of An Elite Teen BitTorrent Uploader

Another week gone and another chance for everyone to see Techdirt through someone else's eyes. While I may not be as prosaic and prolific of a commenter as some of the regulars, I hope you find some common threads in what I found poignant this week on Techdirt.

We start with the new research report from Floor64, The Sky Is Rising. While regular readers here were not surprised at the results, my first thought was how to get big content business to read and, more importantly, understand the salient points put forth. As usual, the comments ran back and forth over the standard arguments, but for me, the one from Janis stood out as an indicator of things to come where creators are no longer required to be massively successful in order to earn something from their efforts. As for the rest of the day, we had some of the all too typical indicators that the major content studios are going to continue acting like spoiled toddlers. Color me surprised... NOT!.

Tuesday morning had an article from Glyn Moody that hit close to home. Until my division was spun off and sold late last year, I was a programmer for LexisNexis (LN is a subsidiary of Reed-Elsevier). Despite my desire for the company to prosper so I could continue to receive a paycheck, the Elsevier publishing division was always one I delighted seeing in decline. I firmly believe that, as a whole, mankind is better served through open and shared research. I, for one, hope this latest boycott and alternative publishing effort succeed. Of course, following that, we had more examples of clueless content owners and their overblown sense of entitlement.

Wednesday brought some stark reminders of just how broken our current system of government really is - especially that last one. Think about it - a Senator who is doing what he can to FIX some of the very serious problems in this country is being attacked for doing his job? We really need to get out of this "R vs. D" mentality and focus on the individual issues. If only we could get people to realize that you can agree with someone on one thing and disagree with them on everything else. Madness, I tell you!

Unfortunately, work intruded most severely on Thursday, but there were two standouts. First, I took great joy in seeing that Redbox is once again standing up to Warner Bros. and their ridiculous attempts to treat consumers like cattle. I often wonder if Hollywood will ever realize that people want to be entertained, but in a manner that fits their budget and time frame. All these machinations to alter how people spend their entertainment dollars isn't going to change that one bit. Of course, much like Chosen Reject, I find this fight fascinating and hope to see some updates down the road. On the flip side, it was distressing to see yet another politician ignoring his oath of office to defend the Constitution. Regardless of opinion or even how much of a potential jerk he could be, Josh Fox had a right to record the proceedings. This is another one that I will be trying to find some follow-up on.

Ahhh, Friday. End of the week for many and a day we spend looking forward to the weekend. First up is actually a comment from Suja where a minor replacement made for, in my opinion, a much more accurate set of statements. Next, we had Capitalist Lion Tamer warning reminding us just how close to a police state the US has become and that it's not likely to get better until it's too late. The portions noting the "War on Drugs" and the corresponding comments below reminded me of the first part of an anti-SOPA post on another blog I read: The so-called war on drugs is a joke. A sick, sad, stupid joke. It didn't get rid of drugs, it didn't reduce drug use, or drug smuggling, or drug violence, or drug related deaths. It didn't, in fact, do a damned thing. All it does is keep a lot of law enforcement types employed chasing their tails. While his language can be a bit rough around the edges, he has a rather succint way of putting things and is usually writing from personal experience. Finally, of course, what kind of a consumer would I be if I didn't at least mention the Super Bowl. It's nice to see someone speaking up about the ridiculous overreach of the NFL. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go practice my 12oz curls and 5 yard dash (to the bathroom) for Sunday's game when I watch it on a friend's 60" flat screen.

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The internet is a great tool to alert politicians to all the dangers of this treaty, just as the internet was a tool to mobilize people against the SOPA and PIPA bills in the US. For any lobby to be effective, however, it must be fact based. Misinformed criticism helps those supporting ACTA.

The dangers and threats of the ACTA treaty are shared by free-speech advocates and access to medicine groups alike. ACTA is seeking to deal with a number of widely differing issues, and hence does not do a good job at any of them. Additionally, there are serious concerns about the collateral damage that ACTA would cause.

Regrettably, concerns by businesses, NGO’s and politicians have not led to a better result. This is partly due to the intransparant way in which ACTA has been established and negotiated. As a democratically elected representative, I believe it is not the role of government to protect outdated business models, and I do believe it is our job to ensure democratic oversight.

Besides zooming in on the details of what ACTA will and will not do, taking a step back and looking at the broader picture is also important. As someone who advocates copyright reform, notably the harmonization of copyright laws in Europe, I do not believe stricter enforcement of outdated systems is helpful or relevant. Enforcement is not even possible in many cases, and not without violating people’s fundamental rights.

Yet there is a big push towards enforcing outdated legal structures of copyright by the entertainment industry. ACTA will lock any signatory country into a system of copyright enforcement, leaving the democratic process disadvantaged to enact necessary reform of our laws to suit the digital age.

The fast development of the information society and all the innovations we have seen in the last 15 or so years have changed the way we live. People can enforce their fundamental rights of access to information, and free speech with the help of the internet. Human rights violations are documented and shared across the world, and the way we access and share information and culture such as news, music and films has changed forever. Most copyright rules were developed for the printing press and codified internationally before radio had even been invented.

Some of the most important EU laws regulating the internet were established before social media and peer-to-peer sharing took off. The E-commerce Directive of 2000 and the Copyright Directive of 2001 were enacted without foresight of the new services which were developed over the last 10 years. Time and time again, it has been proven that the Directives and their national implementations do not suit the digital age that followed directly afterwards. The fragmentation of European copyright puts the EU, which is widely known for its wealth in culture, at a competitive disadvantage in comparison to the United States.

Copyright and E-Commerce need to suit the needs of the advanced information society we now live in. To enable a flourishing Digital Single Market in Europe, we need to analyse case-law of the last 12 years regarding the internet, hear from creators, innovators and consumers. If we want to serve consumers, artists and businesses well, we need to find a new balance in copyright. Every aspect of copyright needs to be discussed: the exclusive rights, limitations and exceptions, collective management, enforcement, etc. Only then should we discuss how to enforce the new found balance on the international arena, such as with ACTA.

ACTA must not be passed. Let’s focus on reform to allow for the opportunities of the internet to bloom, instead of allowing outdated business models to limit the free market, and to criminalize audiences. Additionally, health threats as a result of counterfeit medicine deserve a better solution than ACTA. Join me in voicing your concern with this treaty, so we can establish flexible copyright rules which are fit for the 21st century.

About The Author

Marietje Schaake is a Member of European Parliament (D66/ALDE Group). She is a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), as well as the Committee on Culture, Media and Education (CULT).

Follow @marietjed66

Source: We Need Copyright Reform, Not ACTA!

As we recently noted in our The Sky Is Rising study, all of the evidence shows that we're living in a time of true abundance in terms of the content world. All of the data shows this. It's really incontrovertible. And yet, we keep hearing from certain folks -- often legacy entertainment industry interests -- that somehow the content creation world is at risk. That's pretty difficult to square with reality. In fact, I think it could be argued that if the industry gets its way with some of its legal proposals that would put this amazing age of creativity at much greater risk than anything the industry is complaining about.

It seems that plenty of others are recognizing this as well. Tom sent over a great blog post by Terry Border of Bent Objects, explaining why this is the most creative time in history... and why we shouldn't take that for granted. And, of course, a big reason for such an explosion of creativity is because of the internet, and the ability to not just create, promote and distribute works, but the ability to communicate. Think about the art of writing for a minute. Think about creative, or biographical, or whatever kind of writing. Before blogging, how many people wrote any more than it took to fill the space of postcard? If it wasn't their profession, I'd say very few. Now, it seems like everyone has had a blog at one time or another. And now "micro-blogging" is in style thanks to Twitter. Not as many words you say? Right, but it's a different skill that people are learning. Very concise wording. Do people want to post boring tweets? Of course not. People spend quite a few minutes of their day trying to write interesting, humorous, or informative Tweets and Facebook updates. Small bits of creativity for sure, but add them up on a weekly basis, and it's quite a bit.

I think of all the craftspersons who have learned from each other on-line. Popular knitting blogs for instance have taken that old past-time of grandma's and made it mainstream. Before Etsy and the like, where would a person sell the scarves and hats that they made besides the occasional craft fair? I mean, a family only needs so many scarves, and then the knitting needles were put away. Communities on the web not only serve as a place to share work and ideas, but that also serve as shops to sell your product worldwide, creating a reason to make more, and to try new, crazy ideas. Kind of incredible. That's just a small clip from his longer post, which goes into much more detail. It's worth a read, and definitely pay attention to his conclusion: My contention is that these days we live in right now will be looked back on with longing, especially with various governments trying to push through laws to control the internet. If that happens, these will be the good old days, so don't take them for granted. Look around and enjoy. I think this is an incredible time to make things, and I hope it stays around for a while. Couldn't have said it better myself. And this is part of the reason why so many people are so worried about things like SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and TPP. We don't want this amazing era to go away. We just want it to get better and better.

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As Hollywood struggles to come up for breath and understand the nature of what hit them last month in the SOPA/PIPA debate, it appears they're still thinking that part of this is an "education" issue -- and if they could just tell young people how evil file sharing is that everything would be good. A whole bunch of folks have been passing on variations on the news that Paramount Pictures (owned by Viacom -- one of the major backers of SOPA/PIPA) wants to go talk to college kids. A bunch of universities received: "an overnight fedex letter from Paramount expressing the extent to which they are ‘humbled’ and ‘surprised’ by the extent of the public reaction to SOPA/PIPA and asking to come to campus to talk to faculty and students about “content theft, its challenges, and possible ways to address it." Paramount specifically asks to give a "formal presentation followed by an open discussion period or to participate in a class session." First of all, actually having open discussions would be a good first step, because that's been lacking in this whole debate. But, I'm not sure starting off that conversation by referring to copyright infringement as "content theft" is the best way to kick things off. I know that the industry has chosen "content theft" as its moral panic phrase of the year, after they realized that the people they'd unfairly branded as "pirates" had taken back that phrase and turned it to their own advantage.

Why not hold a truly open discussion in which everyone can participate and talk about ideas as to the true nature of the problem? That discussion is happening every day out there on the "wild west" of the internet, if only the folk at the studios actually wanted to join in. Perhaps if they did so, they wouldn't be so terrified of the internet.

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One of the more interesting things over the past few months is just how mainstream copyright issues have suddenly become. This point has been driven home with the news that Ruben Bolling's famous Tom the Dancing Bug comic has taken on the excessiveness of both copyright extension and enforcement with his God-man character doing tremendous damage just to enforce the copyright on a work that should be in the public domain: You can check out some of the comments that people have left under the comic as well. It's really a pretty good description of this debate in many ways. The supporters of these bills don't seem to want to listen. They don't even acknowledge that there might be collateral damage or that copyright has been expanded and stretched in ways that are absolutely ridiculous. You bring up any of that... and they're ready to dash off about some other problem.

Either way, very cool to see Bolling take on this issue, and see the issue getting more and more mainstream attention.

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Pork is one of the most commonly consumed meats worldwide. Interestingly, even though it was marketed as the "other white meat" (that slogan was retired in 2011), the USDA always referred to pork as a "red meat" on its website. Here are just a few more fascinating tidbits on pig products.

• A severe nosebleed (caused by a rare blood disorder that prevents normal blood clotting) can be stopped with a rolled up piece of salt cured pork. This salt pork remedy has actually been around for several decades -- but it doesn't work with bacon, so don't grab just any slice of deli meat. [url]
• Bacon-flavored toothpaste is available for folks who like to brush their teeth as an appetizer for breakfast. Don't swallow this stuff or use as a condiment. [url]
• The use of lard isn't too common in cooking anymore -- but who's to blame for that? Pig fat just doesn't sound as appetizing as hydrogenated vegetable oils... does it? hmm. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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When it comes to DRM, nothing is more annoying and hated than DRM that requires a constant internet connection. This DRM regularly pings a server controlled by the creator of the game in order to prove that you, the paying customer who paid money to buy the game, are not a dirty pirate. One of the loudest critiques of this type of DRM is what happens when the DRM cannot make the connection to the server. We have already seen what happens to Ubisoft games when there is an unexpected server crash. Gamers weren't too thrilled about that. Now we learn that Ubisoft is looking to give its paying customers another look into why such DRM systems are a real bad idea. Ubisoft will be taking its authentication servers down on Tuesday, February 7th for an unspecified amount of time.

While Ubisoft takes its servers down to migrate them, gamers who paid good money in order to play DRM'ed games will be unable to do so. What makes this worse is that all those pirates that this DRM was supposedly going to stop will be able to play those games all they want during the migration. This is the thanks that paying customers get. This is the thanks that fans that want to support Ubisoft in its PC gaming endeavors get for their loyalty. When it comes time for Ubisoft to go to bat for them, the fans get slapped in the face.

To top things off, Ubisoft seems to not be all that concerned with how this affects paying customers. In the announcement of the downtime, it states: We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience. This move ultimately will help us improve the maintenance of our infrastructure and deliver better uptime and greatly improved services for our customers. Hey, thanks for the sympathy. Unfortunately, Ubisoft has not apologized for the inconvenience of having to prove you are not a criminal every few seconds while playing legally purchased games. Too bad Ubisoft is not improving its services by not forcing paying customers to prove they are not dirty pirates. Ubisoft could really go above and beyond in thanking its customers but is instead continuing on the same path of DRM.

This server migration is merely an example of what happens when content creators rely on these types of DRM in their fight against piracy. This is a taste of what will happen when Ubisoft decides it is just not worth it to support these authentication servers any more. When these servers go dark permanently, all those paying customers will never legally be able to play their games again. Yet, the pirates will be able to continue playing as this DRM never stopped them to begin with.

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Every year, the USTR puts out its infamously laughable Special 301 report (as I've pointed out in the past, I've seen people in the ideologically-aligned US Copyright Office mock the Special 301 report openly -- showing that even those who support it know that it's ridiculous). The way it works is that the USTR asks for comments about what countries aren't doing enough to protect US intellectual property abroad, and then puts out a "who's been naughty" and "who's been extra extra naughty" list to publicly shame countries. It's been so ridiculous that Canada -- whose copyright law is much stricter than the US in many ways -- is frequently listed as naughty, and has officially stated that it does not consider the Special 301 process to be legitimate.

And that's because it's not legitimate. The way the process works is that the USTR takes the claims of various lobbyists and companies -- does no additional objective analysis -- and puts together its list. They do allow for open comments, and a couple years ago I submitted some comments about the mistakes in the USTR approach, and how it might be improved. Many others did similar things... and when the report came out, it was the same jumbled mess of industry talking points.

Either way, it's that time of the year again, and Public Knowledge has put up a form to let people sign on to a simple letter asking the USTR to stop its "blind reliance on rights holder assertions" and to "put industry special interest claims under closer scrutiny." If PK's letter is not to your liking, you can submit your own reasoned comments (in 2000 characters or less -- which seems pretty limiting).

For more background info, PK has a blog post explaining the Special 301 process and why you should speak up and tell the USTR to stop acting as government-certified shills for the legacy entertainment business.

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We recently pointed out that a bunch of Polish politicians wore Guy Fawkes/Anonymous masks in Parliament to protest ACTA: It appears that some politicians in Bulgaria thought that was a good idea, and have done the same thing: It's really quite fascinating how much of a meme this has become within politics. While some still like to pretend that Anonymous is just a bunch of vandalizing kids, it certainly seems that some of what Anonymous stands for is having a real impact. I still think that the DDoS attacks are dumb and do more harm than good, but it's quite fascinating to see the wider ideas of what Anonymous is fighting for percolate all the way up into politics around the globe.

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For people who still don't recognize that there's a generational shift going on when it comes to how people view attempts to regulate the internet, communications and copyright law, they might want to start paying attention. According to the folks over at the Pew Research Center, the story of SOPA was the most followed story for people under 30 -- even more than news about the Presidential election. That's probably because SOPA/PIPA had much more of a likelihood of impacting their daily lives. Either way, it's amazing to see politicians and SOPA/PIPA supporters still think that this was just a "vocal minority" complaining about the bill. Their ridiculously bad miscalculation in introducing ridiculously bad bills has now awakened a very large percentage of young people to these issues, in a way that won't just go away. Amazingly, it wasn't just people aged 20 to 30 who took an interest. The research showed that there was interest all the way down to the K-12 set as well.

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This is getting interesting. Following the growing protests about ACTA in Europe, as well as signs of US meddling, Poland's prime minister is making it clear that Poland will not ratify ACTA for the time being, leading to speculation that the EU may not actually join ACTA. Tusk's backtracking could spell the end of ACTA for the entire European Union. If Poland or any other EU member state, or the European Parliament itself, fails to ratify the document, it becomes null and void across the union. As it stands, there are already five member countries that have not even signed ACTA.

"I share the opinions of those who from the beginning said that consultations were not complete," Tusk said, according to a report in Wirtualna Polska. The 54-year-old prime minister added that a Polish rejection of ACTA is now on the table, and admitted that he had previously approached the agreement from a "20th century" perspective, due to his age.

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With the immediate threat from SOPA/PIPA on hold, people have started to turn their attention to the long-running saga of ACTA. While it was being negotiated behind closed doors, few people knew about it, and protests against it were muted. Now that it has finally emerged into the open and begins its last dash towards the finishing line of ratification, the pace of anti-ACTA activism is beginning to pick up quickly. That's especially true in Europe, where everything hinges on the result of the European Parliament's vote on the treaty later this year. If it rejects it, ACTA is dead.

First we had the dramatic resignation of the European Parliament's "rapporteur" on ACTA, then the public apology of the Slovenian Ambassador to Japan for signing ACTA last week in Japan. Individual members of the European Parliament are also coming out against ACTA, notably the Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake, who has prepared an excellent briefing document on the subject, together with several Bulgarian MEPs. But without doubt, the main focus of anti-ACTA actions so far has been in Poland.

As Techdirt has reported, the first demonstration against ACTA took place in Warsaw, and some Polish politicians donned Guy Fawkes/Anonymous masks in parliament to express their displeasure at the Polish government's signing of the treaty. Even the Polish prime minister is trying to back-pedal. Meanwhile, the Polish "No to ACTA" Facebook page has gathered nearly half a million supporters.

Clearly, something very interesting is happening at all levels of Polish society as a result of ACTA, and someone else has noticed this too. According to a translation of a report on the Polish web site gazeta.pl: "--It was around 11.00 in the morning when an employee from the US Embassy called. She was curious about the voting [on ACTA]. He has counted the votes and she thought some of the deputies were missing. Eight deputies were for, three against, four have held up. Something's wrong here, because some votes seem to be missing." -- said Mieczysław Golba from Solidarna Polska. As another Polish politician explained: "-- If the US embassy was just interested in the voting itself, it's okay with us. But questioning about party discipline is scandalous"-- says Sławomir Neumann from PO. -- "Americans should calm down a little, as such behaviour is an interference into the internal affairs of the Polish parliament. We can treat Americans as friends, but there are some borders that one shouldn't cross.We are partners, but not a parliament dependent on the Congress or the president's Obama administration." Assuming this really was someone from the US embassy checking up on the whether Polish politicians were following the party line on ACTA -- there's been no independent corroboration yet -- it does seem pretty extraordinary. Judging by the generally outraged tone of the 1100+ comments on this piece, the Poles themselves don't seem very happy either. I think we can expect to hear much more about Poland's resistance to ACTA in the coming weeks.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

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Paulus Le Son, a blogger detained in Vietnam since August 2011

Arrests of Dissident Bloggers Continue in Vietnam

As we have previously covered, the Vietnamese government continues to crack down on bloggers and writers who have spoken out against the Communist regime. Alternative news site, Vietnam Redemptorist News, has been targeted by the state and several of their active contributors have been arrested. Paulus Le Son, 26, is one of the most active bloggers who was arrested without a warrant.

Vietnam is increasingly applying vague national security laws to silence free speech and political opposition. He is one of 17 bloggers who have been arrested since August 2011. Charged with “subversion” and “activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s administration”, there is a campaign to release him and the others who have been detained

EFF stands with the Committee to Project Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and Front Line in calling for the immediate release of all arrested bloggers.

Google Quietly Releases Country-by-Country Take Downs For Blogger

Most of the blogosphere’s attention has been focused on Twitter’s new censorship policies released last week, but Google has quietly unveiled its new policies for its blogging interface, Blogger. The changes reflect a compromise similar to Twitter's, allowing them to target their response to content removal requests by certain states. Over the coming weeks, Google will redirect users to a country-code top-level domain, or “ccTLD”, which corresponds to the user’s current location based upon their IP address. Google also provides users a way to get around these blocks by entering a formatted No Country Redirect or “NCR” URL.

These moves come after pressure from countries like India that are cracking down on social media sites for content deemed “inappropriate”. On Blogger’s FAQ they explain why it has come to this:

Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country’s law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD.

As these companies enter new countries, they become subject to local laws. Given that they say they already respond to valid and applicable court orders that could effect global access to certain content, it is in some ways an improvement to limit censorship to the region in which it applies. Google’s policy changes are similar to Twitter’s, which we reacted to last week:

For now, the overall effect is less censorship rather than more censorship, since they used to take things down for all users. But people have voiced concerns that "if you build it, they will come,"--if you build a tool for state-by-state censorship, states will start to use it. We should remain vigilant against this outcome.

The lasting consequences of this new policy cannot be foreseen, in the meantime we will be keeping a close eye on Chilling Effects to track government requests to censor content on Blogger.

China Shuts Down Tibetan Blogs

The Chinese government shut down several independent Tibetan-language blogs on Wednesday. This occurred amid heightened tensions in the decades-long conflict between the minority group and the government. While some of the take-downs leave no explanation, there was one notice by the Chinese state on AmdoTibet, whose blog has been the only page of the site has been taken down. It reads:

Due to some of the blog users not publishing in accordance with the goal of this site, the blog has temporarily been shut down, we hope that blog users will have understanding!

We condemn the Chinese government’s heavy-handed censorship policies, and demand them to stop silencing the Tibetan voice in their country.

Related Issues: Free SpeechBloggers' RightsInternational

As we've noted multiple times, it appears the entertainment industry still does not recognize what kind of beast it awoke with its efforts to shove through SOPA and PIPA. While it still believes it was the "tech community" that caused those bills to be shelved, it's been ignoring that a very large segment of internet users have been activated on these issues... and they're angry and willing to be proactive. We've pointed out that lots of attention has turned towards ACTA -- and while it's late in the process, don't underestimate the power of an awful lot of pissed off people who recognize that their internet is being messed with in a way that may harm their ability to communicate.

A bunch of folks have been setting up February 11th as a global day of protest against ACTA, and if the entertainment industry thought that the anger would simmer down after the SOPA/PIPA fight, they may have miscalculated again. Just take a look at the live map showing the planned February 11th protests across Europe:
View ACTA Protests Worldwide - Brought to you by stoppacta-protest.info in a larger map In case you can't see/interact with that, here's a screenshot version: These are live, in-person protests that people are planning across Europe, and if you start clicking through, you see fairly amazing numbers of people committing to come out and protest -- even in places where you wouldn't expect huge numbers of people protesting. Take, for example, Sofia, Bulgaria where over 33,000 (!!!!) people have said they plan to show up with nearly another 10,000 listed as "maybe." Over in Valletta, Malta there are nearly 3,000 people saying they'll be there. These are not exactly protest hotbeds. As you go through the list, you realize just how widespread the opposition on ACTA is becoming -- and you wonder if the entertainment industry has any idea what it unleashed with it's terrible miscalculation with SOPA/PIPA.

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Stewart Baker, the former DHS official whose warnings about how SOPA would wreak havoc on online security were instrumental in convincing many of our elected officials that SOPA and PIPA were half-baked legislative disasters, now has a fascinating writeup for The Hollywood Reporter, trying to explain why the Republican Party turned strongly against SOPA/PIPA. We've pointed out a few times, that the different reactions by the Democrats and Republicans to the online protests threaten to cost the Democrats a generation of voters who had previously looked to them as the party that "got" the internet.

Of course, where it gets even more insightful is Baker's analysis not just of how the Democratic Party appears to have miscalculated badly the reaction to these bills, but how truly and spectacularly Hollywood has failed to understand what happened -- in part because Hollywood still thinks that it drives pop culture. The truth, however, as Baker points out, is that the internet drives popular culture these days... and on the internet, Hollywood is a big bully: The [entertainment] industry still doesn't understand its adversary. From the start, studios saw the fight over SOPA as a struggle with a bunch of other companies -- Google and Internet service providers among them -- that were hoping to profit from the Internet travails of the entertainment industry.

That turned out to be wrong. In fact, the industry is fighting what amounts to a new popular culture.

Unlike the old pop culture Hollywood dominated, this one is largely independent of the music, movie and broadcast industries. In fact, people who spend hours online instead of watching TV or going to movies will probably encounter the entertainment industry only when YouTube videos of their kids dancing to Prince or spoofing Star Wars are pulled down by Hollywood's bots, or when the RIAA threatens to sue them for their college savings, or when digital rights software makes it hard to move their stuff to a new tablet or phone.

To the entertainment industry, these episodes might seem like collateral damage in the fight to stop piracy. To the new pop culture, though, collateral damage and misuse of enforcement tools are everywhere, and they threaten everyone. The content industry has made itself into the villain. Increasingly, it looks like an occupying power, obeyed at gunpoint, despised for its ham-handed excesses and resisted from every dark corner. Unfortunately for Hollywood, as its customers migrate to the Internet, it is losing not just their money but their hearts and minds as well. There's a lot more in Baker's article about the political implications of all of this, which are worth thinking about as well, but I wanted to focus on this key point. Last week, at the Midem music industry conference, I was amazed at how many people from the legacy music business believe, 100%, that the reason SOPA/PIPA were stopped was because Google stepped up its lobbying efforts. I can't even begin to count how many conversations I had with people trying to explain to them that Google only played a small role in what happened, really jumping on the bandwagon pretty late in the game. It was a widespread group of internet users who spoke up, and that really has changed the equation. And Hollywood still can't seem to wrap its mind around that.

That may be because Hollywood was popular culture for so long. It seems to just assume that this is still the case, when there's an awful lot of evidence suggesting otherwise. And really, that explains both Hollywood's confusion in how to deal with all of this, as well as one of the reasons it's lashing out. When Hollywood no longer drives pop culture, it loses its influence, and as it loses its influence, that's going to spell trouble for its business model. The biggest threat to Hollywood's dominance isn't piracy. It's that people no longer view Hollywood as the main source of pop culture any more. Art forms often lose their popularity over time. A few years back, we pointed to a quote from Paul Oskar Kristeller that seems worth highlighting again: There were important periods in cultural history when the novel, instrumental music, or canvas painting did not exist or have any importance. On the other hand, the sonnet and the epic poem, stained glass and mosaic, fresco painting and book illumination, vase painting and tapestry, bas relief and pottery have all been "major" arts at various times and in a way they no longer are now. Gardening has lost its standing as a fine art since the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the moving picture is a good example of how new techniques may lead to modes of artistic expression for which the aestheticians of the eighteenth and nineteenth century had no place in their systems. The branches of the arts all have their rise and decline, and even their birth and death. Perhaps it's not piracy that Hollywood is fighting here. Maybe it's the industry's own cultural relevance.

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For years now, we've mocked how the NFL insists that no one can use the term "Super Bowl" in an advertisement unless they're an official sponsor of the event. That's why it's become so typical to see advertisers using "the big game" instead -- though, five years ago, the NFL even sought the trademark on "The Big Game" because so many advertisers were using it. However, Paul Levy rightly takes advertisers to task for being "weenies" and not standing up to the NFL on this. As he says: Of course, the NFL's position is nonsense -- this is a nominative use that is just as permissible as, for example, referring to the "Chicago Bulls" instead of "the two-time world champions" or "the professional basketball team from Chicago" (Judge Kozinski's example from a different era, when the Bulls mattered). Basically, the game is called the Super Bowl, and calling it that isn't trademark infringement, so long as you don't imply that you're an official sponsor or otherwise officially associated with the game. Of course, where it gets even more ridiculous is when news organizations heed the NFL's warnings over this -- such as the email Levy received from the Boston Globe (pdf) about the Super Bowl, where the term doesn't appear at all. Levy points out that it's simply ridiculous that a news organization (and a big one with plenty of lawyers who get this) would still not use "Super Bowl." Levy suggests we start calling such ridiculousness out: Instead of praising retailers who skate close to the edge, we should take a page from David Bollier’s excellent Brand Name Bullies and call them Brand Name Weenies.   Indeed, it is disappointing that a major metropolitan newspaper that belongs to an 800 pound gorilla like the New York Times Company is unwilling to defy the NFL by using the term in in its advertising.  The Times and the Globe certainly advertise their coverage of the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, also trademarked names.  If big players like the Times don’t have the cojones to stand up for bullying from the NFL, they make it harder for everybody else.  
 
In their recent book Reclaiming Fair Use, Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi warn that when we refrain from exercising our fair use rights, and act as if those rights do not exist, we help create a culture in which fair use loses ground to overly aggressive copyright enforcement.  The same is true in the trademark realm.  We can only hope that when the next Superbowl rolls around, the Times and its brethren, and even the HDTV sellers, will have shed their timidity. It's the Super Bowl. Call it the Super Bowl. Just... uh... don't have too many friends over to watch it on a big screen. Because that's copyright infringement.

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A key element of the political rhetoric around SOPA/PIPA was the idea that it was about jobs, and that jobs are so critical in the current economic climate that safeguarding them overrides any other concern the Net world might have about the means being proposed to do that. But then the key question becomes: who are really more important in terms of those jobs - the copyright industries, or companies exploiting the potential of the Internet that would be harmed if the Net were hobbled by new legislation?

A timely new McKinsey report entitled "Internet matters: The Net's sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity" provides us with some independent evidence on the topic. Here are the relevant findings: The Internet is a critical element of growth. Both our macroeconomic approach and our statistical approach show that, in the mature countries we studied, the Internet accounted for 10 percent of GDP growth over the past 15 years. And its influence is expanding. Over the past five years, the Internet’s contribution to GDP growth in these countries doubled to 21 percent. The latest information (pdf) from the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) claims the GDP contribution from the "core copyright industries" in the US in the years 2007-2010 went from 6.43% to 6.36% - that is, its contribution to the overall GDP was largely unchanged over this period. So the contribution of the "core copyright industries" to GDP growth over this period was also around 6%. The "core copyright industries" are defined as follows: The core industries are those industries whose primary purpose is to create, produce, distribute or exhibit copyright materials. These industries include newspapers and periodicals, motion pictures, recorded music, radio and television broadcasting, and computer software. That is, they include software companies, some of which are doubtless active on the Internet. So the contribution of the non-Internet core copyright industries to the GDP growth from 2007-2010 was less than the 6% figure above. That compares with an overall contribution of the Internet to GDP growth in the mature countries as a whole of 21% (but over five years, not four).

So what about the jobs? Here's McKinsey again: The Internet is a powerful catalyst for job creation. Some jobs have been destroyed by the emergence of the Internet. However, a detailed analysis of the French economy showed that while the Internet has destroyed 500,000 jobs over the past 15 years, it has created 1.2 million others, a net addition of 700,000 jobs or 2.4 jobs created for every job destroyed. This conclusion is supported by McKinsey’s global SME survey, which found 2.6 jobs were created for every one destroyed. Again, the IIPA report offers some figures: the core copyright industries employed 5,496,100 workers in 2007. These workers represented 3.99% of the total U.S. workforce in 2007. By 2010, the number of core copyright employees in the United States had declined by 398,500 workers to 5,097,600. In an earlier report (pdf), the number of people employed by the core copyright industries in 2002 is given as 5.48 million – roughly the same as in 2007. That is, whether or not the numbers are really representative, there was a net decline in the workforce of the "core copyright industries", which include software and probably some Internet companies, from 2002 to 2010.

By contrast, in France, whose population is roughly a fifth of that of the US, the Internet created some 700,000 jobs net. That was from 1995, but in the early years it is likely that relatively few jobs were created by the then-new Internet, so most of those 700,000 would have been created later on - say 400,000 for the last eight years. In the US, we might expect at least a pro rata number – 2.4 million jobs. That's probably an underestimate, since the US is in the Net vanguard, but even if it's an overestimate, the figure is likely to be much better than the net loss of the core copyright industries.

If the backers of SOPA and PIPA were really as concerned about jobs as they profess to be, they would be doing everything in their power to defend the Internet so as to preserve this incredible engine of growth, not attack it. And they would be pushing the copyright industries to embrace the Internet as rapidly and completely as possible, since the McKinsey report also points out: Although the Internet has resulted in significant value shifts between sectors in the global economy, our research demonstrates that all industries have benefited from the Web. Indeed, in McKinsey’s global SME survey, we found that 75 percent of the economic impact of the Internet arises from traditional companies that don’t define themselves as pure Internet players. The businesses that have seen the greatest value creation have benefits from innovation leading to higher productivity triggered by the Internet. Sounds like a perfect solution: instead of fighting the digital revolution tooth and nail, the copyright industries could embrace it like everyone else, stop demanding to be treated like a special case, and start innovating.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

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Yesterday, several sports streaming sites had their domain names seized by the Department of Justice and Homeland Security’s ICE unit.

Leading up to the Super Bowl this weekend, a total of 307 domain names were seized, 16 of which provided access to online streams of popular sporting events.

Commenting on the actions, ICE Director John Morton was quick to declare victory, but perhaps this came a little too soon. Firstrow, one of the largest sites which had several of its domains taken over by the US government, is not planning to give up the ‘battle’ anytime soon.

Quickly after its firstrow.tv, firstrowsports.tv, firstrowsports.net and firstrowsports.com domains were seized, the service was operating as normal under a new domain – Firstrowsports.eu. Talking to TorrentFreak, one of the owners said that the US has stepped out of line by simply taking away their property.

“The US has prided itself on their ‘innocent before proven guilty’ mantra, yet is clearly hypocritical when it comes to this,” the Firstrow co-owner told us. “Numerous times the US has seized domains, before the defendants have been proven guilty in a court of law.”

“What is the point of trying to approve SOPA and PIPA if they do the same without these laws,” he questioned, referring to the pending US bills that would make it even easier to seize allegedly infringing domains.

The response of Firstrow stands in sharp contrast with that of ICE Director John Morton yesterday.

“In sports, players must abide by rules of the game, and in life, individuals must follow the laws of the land. Our message is simple: abiding by intellectual property rights laws is not optional; it’s the law,” Morton said.

This comment forms the base of the dispute. What is the law of the land? The people who operate Firstrow don’t live in the US, and neither are their servers located there. In fact, Firstrow says that their site is perfectly legal where they are based, so they will continue business as usual.

“Since we don’t live in a third-world country here, the courts decide if something is illegal not the entertainment industry lobbies. We will continue until a court decides that the site is illegal, but for now we’ve seen three court decisions on this matter that say it is not.”

Firstrow’s co-owner is referring to the court cases in Spain, where sites that merely link to copyrighted works have been declared legal. Rojadirecta, a site very similar to Firstrow, won in Spanish courts twice.

In the US, however, things work differently. Two operators of streaming sites have already been arrested and await criminal trials. And if the domains are linked to foreigners, the US believes it has the authority to take them over if they are deemed to infringe copyrights.

This stance has raised eyebrows among foreign governments. A few months ago the European Parliament adopted a resolution which criticized US domain name seizures. According to the resolution these measures need to be countered as they endanger “the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communication.”

Yesterday’s actions show that the US authorities are not impressed by the international critique, just as Firstrow refuses to change course after yet another domain seizure. Firstrow says ICE is wasting its time and continues to provide access to sports fans all across the world, who are otherwise unable to see their beloved games.

“ICE must have a lot of spare time if they can waste it on these domain seizures,” Firstrow’s co-owner says. “They should invest time in the real important stuff , instead of chasing people who have no other option than to watch a sports game for free.”

Source: Seized Sports Streaming Site Makes a Blazing Comeback

We've written about the somewhat horrifying ruling in the Richard Prince appropriation art case before. If you haven't been following the details, Prince is an appropriation artist, who takes works he finds elsewhere, and modifies and transforms them into different pieces of artwork. The law around this kind of artwork is tragically murky -- with some cases ruling that appropriation art is fair use, and some ruling otherwise. The Prince case got extra attention for a few reasons. One is that Prince is considered one of the biggest name artists around, and his works can sell for millions of dollars. The second is that this case also implicated the gallery that showed Prince's work, raising some serious questions about secondary liability for galleries, and whether or not galleries themselves must become copyright experts. Finally, the ruling suggested that Prince's artwork -- valued at a few million dollars -- might need to be destroyed..

This is the truly horrifying part. Whether or not you appreciate the work, clearly some people do like it. Personally, it's not my taste, but I'll be damned if my own personal taste (or any other third party's personal taste) should ever be the determining factor in whether or not any particular piece of art should exist.

And, yet, that's what we have here. While the case is on appeal, the NY Times recently ran a pretty good overview of the case, and highlighted why the art world is paying so much attention to it. Especially for a younger generation, building new works of art on works that came before seems totally natural. It's a good thing: “For the generation that I spend my days with, there’s not even any ideological baggage that comes along with appropriation anymore,” said Stephen Frailey, an artist whose work has used appropriation and who runs the undergraduate photography program at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. “They feel that once an image goes into a shared digital space, it’s just there for them to change, to elaborate on, to add to, to improve, to do whatever they want with it. They don’t see this as a subversive act. They see the Internet as a collaborative community and everything on it as raw material.”

At the same time the tools for mining and remolding those mountains of raw material are proliferating. In November a developer and a designer introduced an iPad art app called Mixel, aimed at amateurs but certain to end up in artists’ studios. It allows users to grab images from the Web or elsewhere, collage them almost effortlessly and then pass them around, social media style, for appreciation or re-mixing.

One of its creators, Khoi Vinh, a former design director of NYTimes.com, has been surprisingly frank when asked about the tsunami of copyright problems such an idea stirs up. “This is really a case of, you have to do it, try it and ask for forgiveness later,” he said to an interviewer. “Otherwise it would never get out there.” What you begin to realize is that, like the wider copyright battle, to some extent this is a "generational" thing. And I don't mean that totally as an "age" thing. There are plenty of "older" people who understand these issues (or who create works via appropriation), just as there are some younger copyright maximalists. But, in general, this does seem like a generational thing, where you have generations of people who simply find the process of building on the works of art completely natural, and those who don't.

But the part that really troubles me about these discussions is a rather simple point about fair use: if the new work does not, in any way, harm the original work, it's seems positively insane to me to think that it shouldn't be seen as fair use. This point is made by Prince's lawyers: Joshua Schiller, Mr. Prince’s appeals lawyer from the firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner, said the boundary is whether a new work of art results from the borrowing. And he argued that it was clear that Mr. Prince had made parts of Mr. Cariou’s pictures into distinctive Richard Prince works, not just copy them to pass them off as his own and deprive Mr. Cariou of his livelihood. Whether the work was successful and whether Mr. Prince’s intentions were interesting or even explainable can be left to debate. But the primary intention was to create a work of art, Mr. Schiller said, and that is the kind of creativity the law seeks to encourage.

“This is not piracy,” he said. “These are not handbags.” I'm still waiting for someone (anyone!) to give me a compelling explanation for why it's a problem in any way, shape or form, if the new work does nothing to take away from the old work. In fact, in cases like this, it's easy to argue that the new work, since it came from a much more well known and successful artist, likely drew much more attention to the original work, thereby raising that artist's profile and stature.

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