A busy pedestrian city core is common in Europe, and the jewel of any city, but US cities rarely make it work. Cars are banned but they also bring in pedestrians
You, by definition, read blog posts. But the era of lots of individual personal web sites seems to be on the wane. It used to be everybody had a "home page" and many had one that updated frequently (a blog) but I, and many other bloggers, have noticed a change of late. It can be seen in the "referer" summaries you get from your web server that show who is making popular links to your site.
I have many things to discuss on the problem of "fake news" (which is to say, deliberately constructed false reports aimed to be spread to deceive) and the way it spreads through social media. This hot topic, seen as one of the largest threats to democracy to ever arise -- especially when combined with automated microtargeting of political propaganda -- is causing people to clamour for solutions.
We're all shocked at the idea of a growing neo-Nazi movement, at the horrible attack in Virginia and the lack of condemnation by the President. It's making us forget that the neo-Nazi radical right are trolls with many parallels to online trolls. And the only thing to do is not to feed the trolls, and definitely don't attack the civil rights that they make use of.
A protest march has 3 main functions:
There's been a lot of talk this week on the nature of free speech. I'm a very strong defender of free speech, so I felt it would be worth laying out some of the reasons why "the first amendment is not just the law, it's a good idea." While I am not speaking for any particular organization, and am not a lawyer nor giving legal advice, my background includes things like:
Last night, YouTube posted a note on the official YouTube Blog concerning the recent firestorm over Content-ID takedowns like the one I wrote about earlier in the week regarding my Downfall DMCA Parody.
In the post, they are kind enough to link to my video (now back up on YouTube thanks to my disputing the Content-ID takedown) as an example of a fair use parody, and to a talk by (former) fellow EFF director Larry Lessig which incorporated some copyrighted music.
However, some of the statements in the post deserve a response. Let me start first that I hope I do understand a bit of YouTube's motivations in creating the Content-ID system. YouTube certainly has a lot of copyright violations on it, and it's staring down the barrel of a billion dollar lawsuit from Viacom and other legal burdens. I can understand why it wants to show the content owners that it wants to help them and wants to be their partner. It is a business and is free to host what it wants. However, it is also part of Google, whose mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and of course to not "be evil" in the process of doing so. On the same blog, YouTube declares its dedication to free speech very eloquently.
In a bizarre twist of life imitating art that may be too "meta" for your brain, Constantin Films, the producer of the war movie "Downfall" has caused the takedown of my video which was put up to criticise their excessive use of takedowns.
Update: YouTube makes an official statement and I respond.
A brief history:
Starting a few years ago, people started taking a clip from Downfall where Hitler goes on a rampage, and adding fake English subtitles to produce parodies on various subjects. Some were very funny and hundreds of different ones were made. Some were even made about how many parodies there were. The German studio, Constantin, did some DCMA takedowns on many of these videos.
So I made, with considerable effort, my own video, which depicted Hitler as a producer at Constantin Films. He hears about all the videos and orders DMCA takdowns. His lawyers (generals) have to explain why you can't just do that, and he gets angry. I have a blog post about the video, including a description of all the work I had to do to make sure my base video was obtained legally.
Later, when the video showed up on the EFF web site, Apple decided to block an RSS reader from the iPhone app store because it pointed to the video and Hitler says a bad word that shocked the Apple reviewers.
Not to spoil things too much, but the video also makes reference to an alternate way you can get something pulled off YouTube. Studios are able to submit audio and video clips to YouTube which are "fingerprinted." YouTube then checks all uploaded videos to see if they match the audio or video of some allegedly copyrighted work. When they match, YouTube removes the video. That's what I have Hitler decide to do instead of more DMCA takedowns, and lo, Constantin actually ordered this, and most, though not all of the Downfall parodies are now gone from YouTube. Including mine.
Now I am sure people will debate the extent to which some of the parodies count as "fair use" under the law. But in my view, my video is about as good an example of a parody fair use as you're going to see. It uses the clip to criticise the very producers of the clip and the takedown process. The fair use exemption to copyright infringement claims was created, in large part, to assure that copyright holders didn't use copyright law to censor free speech. If you want to criticise content or a content creator -- an important free speech right -- often the best way to do that will make use of the content in question. But the lawmakers knew you would rarely get permission to use copyrighted works to make fun of them, and wanted to make sure critical views were not stifled.
In early 2000, after a tumultuous period in the EFF's history, and the staff down to just a handful, I was elected chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I had been on the board for just a few years, but had been close to the organization since it was founded, including participating with it as a plaintiff in the landmark supreme court case which struck down the Communications Decency Act in 1996.
Last week, I posted a pointer to my parody of a famous clip from the movie Downfall and I hope you enjoyed it. While the EFF itself didn't make this video, I do chair the foundation and they posted a pointer to it on the "Deep Links" blog. All well and good.
Some time earlier, an iPhone app developer put together an iPhone app which would display the EFF blog feed. This wasn't an EFF effort, but the EFF gave them permission to put the logo in the app.
New Update, April 2010: Yes, even this parody video has been taken down though the YouTube Content-ID takedown system -- just as my version of Hitler says he is going to do at the end. I filed a dispute, and it seems that now you can watch it again on YouTube, at least until Constantin responds as well as on Vimeo. I have a new post about the takedown with more details. In addition, YouTube issued an official statement to which I responded.
Unless you've been under a rock, you have probably seen a parody clip that puts new subtitles on a scene of Hitler ranting and raving from the 2004 German movie Downfall (Der Untergang). Some of these videos have gathered millions of views, with Hitler complaining about how he's been banned from X-box live, or nobody wants to go to Burning Man, or his new camera sucks. The phenomenon even rated a New York Times article.
It eventually spawned meta-parodies, where Hitler would rant about how many Hitler videos were out on the internet, or how they sucked. I've seen at least 4 of these. Remarkably, one of them, called Hitler is a Meme was pulled from YouTube by the studio, presumably using a DMCA takedown. A few others have also been pulled, though many remain intact. (More on that later.)
Of course, I had to do my own. I hope, even if you've seen a score of these, that this one will still give you some laughs. If you are familiar with the issues of DRM, DMCA takedowns, and copyright wars, I can assure you based on the reviews of others that you will enjoy this quite a bit. Of course, as it criticises YouTube as well as the studio, I have put it on YouTube. But somehow I don't think they would be willing to try a takedown -- not on so obvious a fair use as this one, not on the chairman of the most noted legal foundation in the field. But it's fun to dare them.
(Shortly I may also provide the video in some higher quality locations. I do recommend you click on the "HQ" button if you have bandwidth.)
It's been a remarkably dramatic year at the EFF. We worked in a huge number of areas, acting on or participating in a lot of cases. The most famous is our ongoing battle over the warrantless wiretapping scandal, where we sued AT&T for helping the White House. As you probably know, we certainly got their attention, to the point that President Bush got the congress to pass a law granting immunity to the phone companies. We lost that battle, but our case still continues, as we're pushing to get that immunity declared unconstitutional.
A recent story that United had removed all instances of the word "God" (not simply Goddamn) from a historical movie reminded me just how much they censor the movies on planes.
Here they have an easy and simple way out. Everybody is on headsets, and they already offer different soundtracks in different languages by dialing the dial. So offer the censored and real soundtrack on two different audio channels. Parents can easily make sure the kids are on whatever soundtrack they have chosen for them, as the number glows on the armrest.
Today, Congress passed 410-15 the Delete Telephony Online Predators act, or DTOPA. This act requires all schools and libraries to by default block access to the social networking system called the "telephone." All libraries receiving federal funding, and schools receiving E-rate funding must immediately bar access to this network. Blocks can be turned off, on request, for adults, and when students are under the supervision of an adult.
I'm not in the business of helping countries be repressive, but I started thinking what I would do if I were the Chinese internet censor. I don't think I'm giving them any secrets, but these thoughts may affect our own plans on how to fight such censors.
The most important realization was that I wouldn't want to make my great firewall really strong. That it was not only easier, but possibly better, to make it possible to bypass it with a moderate amount of determination. Not trivial, as in "hold down the shift key" but not requiring cypherpunk level skills.
The reason is that if I allow such holes, I can watch who uses them, and watching them is more valuable to the secret police than plugging them. And if the holes don't require fancy data encryption and hiding techniques, most people seeking to bypass the firewall will do so unencrypted, making it far easier to watch what is done. But even if people encrypt, they do reveal who they are. So long as there are not immense numbers, that's enough to give me a good dissident watchlist.
My goal as censor would be to tune the filtering so that the true dissidents can all bypass it, but make it hard enough that I don't get so many people on my watchlist that I can't handle the size of it. The censors know they can't keep information from the truly determined, even in the most repressive regimes. They just need to keep it from the masses. (Even the masses will hear rumours in any society, but they will always just be rumours.)
This explains why many of the proxies people have put up to let people bypass the firewall remain themselves unblocked. This also can be explained by inefficiency of maintaining the block-list, but this time I am prepared to attribute something to malice rather than incompetence. Especially if the proxies are unencrypted I would not want to block them -- unless they go so popular that I could no longer track the users.
This is one of the problems with the Google China decision. In the past, use of the firewall-blocked google.com was not suspicious, though typing certain phrases into it may have been. Now, with censored google.cn, use of google.com suggests you are trying to get past the censorship at least. A big win for surveillance. Google is, wisely, not keeping logs in China, but that doesn't stop the international gateways from keeping the logs.
(Read on for some anti-censor techniques.)
Google's decision to operate a search service in China, implementing Chinese censorship rules into the service, has been a controversial issue. Inside Google itself, it is reported there was much debate, with many staff supporting and many staff opposing the final decision, as as been the case in the public. So it's not a simple issue.
Nonetheless, in spite of being friends with many in the company, I have to say they made the wrong decision, for the wrong reason.
Ok, so this story is almost surely just an unconfirmed rumour, but the graphic I designed below still makes a nice ribbon.
The EFF is holding a Blog-a-thon on our 15th anniversary inviting people to describe things that made them decide to fight for freedom.
On my rec.humor.funny web site, I maintain the newsgroup archives, including this 13 year old joke entitled American Expressway.
Today I got one of those bullying "cease and desist" letters from American Express's law firm, ordering me to take down the joke for trademark infringement. Here's the text of the cease and desist
Do these guys know who they are trying to bully? I guess not, here's my response to them:
You can "Screw More" with an American Express Lawyer
Do you know me?
I built a famous company with a famous name, and then satirists made fun of me by taking advantage of the constitutional protections afforded parody when it comes to trademark law?
That's why I retained Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd, the "American Express Lawyers." Should you ever feel your reputation lost or stolen by free speech and satire, just one call gets LVM to write a threatening cease and desist letter -- usually on the same day -- citing all sorts of important sounding laws but ignoring the realities of parody. Most innocent web sites will cave in, not knowing their rights. LVM will pretend it has never read cases like L.L. Bean, Inc. v. High Society and dozens of others. There's no preset limit on the number of people you can threaten, so you can bully as much as you wish.
