Virgin Media Faces Angry Pirate Bay Fans For Blocking Access To The Website

After Virgin Media was court ordered to block access to the file-sharing hub – The Pirate Bay – file-sharers have decided to take direct action against UK’s ISP.

The protesters plan to not only employ (D)DoS attacks on the internet provider, but also to launch a protest at its head office. The targets include Virgin’s worldwide health, airline, and festival brands, not all of which are owned by Virgin Group.

“Regardless of the high court judgement, Virgin Media have chosen to comply rather than appeal or fight the decision unlike British Telecom (BT). These Actions are utterly Reprehensible,” reads a Pirate Pad (http://goo.gl/zzvbE) statement.

Here are some comments regarding the measures taken by Virgin Media:
“Soo…f***ing up our net connections will help us…how? ffs.”
While another user says:

“Good luck with ddos’ing the UKs fastest provider whos servers are probably sat on the main trunk, that they own… roffle.”

Virgin is the first UK ISP to take action after court ordered on Monday to block access to The Pirate Bay. The internet provider is using site-blocking software that was originally designed to prevent access to child abuse websites.

“We have received an order from the Courts requiring us to prevent access to The Pirate Bay to protect against copyright infringement. Virgin Media, alongside other ISPs, comply with court orders but we strongly believe that tackling copyright infringement also needs compelling legal alternatives, such as our agreement with Spotify, to give consumers access to great content at the right price,” said a Virgin Media spokesperson.

Alongside with Virgin, BT, Sky, TalkTalk, O2 and Everything Everywhere (Orange and T-Mobile) were also ordered to follow BPI’s request to cut access to TPB. BT, however, asked for more time to consider their decision.

TPB’s reaction was to offer its users alternative routes – such as proxy sites.

The Industry, The Govt and The Copyright Trolls

We come with yet another report from the EFF about how Hollywood studios created a new kind of “monster” – copyright trolls who force settlements from internet subscribers by making use of intimidation, aided by US’s faulty copyright laws.

Last Friday, EFF Senior Staff Technologist Seth Schoen took the witness stand in AF Holdings v. Does where he tried to explain to a federal judge why BitTorrent users should not be deprived by their constitutional rights when scoped by trolls. Taking into consideration the brutality on which copyright treaties are built, EFF asks a fair question:

“How will Hollywood help protect US citizens from copyright trolls?”

Meanwhile these trolls are suing groups of people from 20 to 5.000 alleged pirates in a single lawsuit with only a list of IP addresses. After obtaining the court’s permission, they send subpoenas to ISPs with the hope to obtain their users’ names and addresses. The next step is to send threatening letters, asking for settlements “or else”. Until now, over 200.000 U.S. residents have been involved in such lawsuits, many of which preferred to settle just to end the harassment. Although groups like the RIAA ended the lawsuit campaign back in 2008 after realizing the damage done to the industry’s image, this has meant nothing for copyright trolls.

Since 2008 they’ve continued to sue six times more people than the music groups ever did, applying aggressive methods of intimidation, and eventually cashing in millions from these settlements. At the core of the problem are U.S. copyright laws and legal precedents pushed through Congress and the courts by the entertainment industries and their lobbyists. Let’s take for example the statutory penalty for sharing only one copyrighted work (one track) that can reach up to $150.000. Therefore, it’s no wonder that people prefer to settle for several thousand dollars – even if they broke no law. According to the entertainment industries, it is imperative for these penalties to be as high as possible, thinking that this will discourage illegal downloading, but ignoring the fact that they are creating an abusive system that’s controlled exactly by these trolls.

EFF’s article continues on writing about the legal doctrine of “secondary liability”. Both the movie and recording industries are continuously pressing for broader liability for intermediaries, internet sites and services, and developers of tools and software. It is yet another loophole on which copyright trolls profit. They disregard actual copyright infringers and focus on the owners of internet accounts. As such, even if someone understands secondary liability and can afford a lawyer, he or she still prefers to settle and not risk a long expensive trial, regardless of the fact that one could win.

Furthermore, plaintiffs in such suits usually mix together internet users from around the country and obtain their identities from ISPs based on a court order.

“Doing this requires trampling on jurisdiction rules that keep people from being unfairly forced to defend themselves far from home, joinder rules that guarantee every defendant is treated as an individual, and the First Amendment, which gives us a right to communicate anonymously,” explains EFF’s article.

Last but not least, the entertainment industries have spent millions of lobbying and advertising dollars during the decades to promote the buggy idea that if copyright law promotes creativity, then even more aggressive copyright legislations will promote harder.

“According to this philosophy, the importance of preventing even the most inconsequential copyright infringement justifies chilling free speech, unmasking anonymous Internet users, wholesale regulation of the Internet … and setting loose the trolls,” Mitch Stoltz explains.

This view was on full display last week at a hearing in the D.C. federal district court, when ISPs – aided by the EFF – tried to destroy subpoenas for internet users’ identities.

One thing is clear, however – there will always be people who are willing to use the legal system as part of a shakedown, but copyright trolls, if not stopped by Hollywood, will always lurk around, sniffing money out of the pockets of innocent people.

The White House Recommends CISPA Veto; CISPA Dissected By The EFF

In a Wednesday e-mail released by the Office of Management and Budget, the latter said that if CISPA reaches the president’s desk in its current form, “his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”

“Legislation should address core critical infrastructure vulnerabilities without sacrificing the fundamental values of privacy and civil liberties for our citizens, especially at a time our Nation is facing challenges to our economic well-being and national security,” the e-mail states.

“The Administration looks forward to continuing to engage with the Congress in a bipartisan, bicameral fashion to enact cybersecurity legislation to address these critical issues. However, for the reasons stated herein, if H.R. 3523 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”

OMB’s message highlights various reasons on why the office opposes the bill, including that the bill “significantly departs from longstanding efforts to treat the Internet and cyberspace as civilian spheres” and that it “also lacks sufficient limitations on the sharing of personally identifiable information between private entities and does not contain adequate oversight or accountability measures necessary to ensure that the data is used only for appropriate purposes.”

In response, the authors of the bill said that Tuesday’s revisions take into account “nearly every single one of the criticisms leveled by the Administration, particularly those regarding privacy and civil liberties of Americans.”

The bill is set for a vote before the House of Representatives on Friday.

In addition we find out from an EFF’s report that Rep. Rogers is convinced that the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is an information “sharing” bill. Sounds so innocent, but the truth is that the act itself is also a surveillance bill. Its definitions allow private companies to monitor network traffic and stored data (including private e-mails) and transfer this kind of data to the government or others with no oversight or legal accountability, bypassing established privacy laws.

In a press call, Rep. Rogers said that the bill “does not provide any authority for the government to monitor private networks or read private e mail,” but the truth is that CISPA allows private companies to use “cybersecurity systems” – a very ambiguous term in the bill – to “identify and obtain” information on any relevant cyber threat, and then send the communications (without de-identifying the data) to the government. So giving this kind of power strictly based on good faith would be an act of insanity.

Furthermore, the bill creates expansive legal immunity, making companies and the government largely unaccountable to users. It provides “good faith” immunity for using those “cybersecurity systems” to obtain information, for not using for personal purposes the obtained information, and for making any decisions based on the information they receive. Let’s give an example to better understand under what circumstances CISPA works its magic: let us say that a company finds out about a security flaw, fails to fix it, and users’ information is misused or stolen (better said leaked). Well, if that happens, the companies are not to be held liable as long as they acted “in good faith”. In addition, companies “acting in good faith” are also liability-free for engaging in potential countermeasures, even if they harm innocent parties.

That means that CISPA grants surveillance power to private entities “notwithstanding any other provision of law,” bypassing existing rights to sue under laws like the Wiretap Act, the Stored Communications Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. In other words, if CISPA passes, companies will lose their legal right to protect their users’ privacy, such as federal or state privacy laws that keep companies from sharing sensitive personal information like health records and personal financial information.

Although there is a proposed amendment that allows people to file lawsuits against the federal government in case it violates some restrictions on the use of the obtained data, in practice this amendment is meaningless. First of all, the amendment only permits a lawsuit if it’s brought within two years of the date of the violation and not the date of the discovery of the violation. Yet CISPA exempts all data received by the government from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and blocks disclosure to any non-federal entity without the consent of the sending entity – meaning that it’s likely that users won’t be aware of any violation of their privacy for years (probably never), and when they do it will be too late, due to the two years limitation.

Second of all, if an individual sues the government, the government could invoke privileges like the state secrets privilege. This kind of lawsuit – involving classified information or state secrets – is difficult, expensive, and time consuming.

Here’s an example:

EFF (The Electronic Frontier Foundation) has been involved for years in a lawsuit claiming Fourth Amendment and statutory violations rooting from the warrantlesswiretapping program ran by the National Security Agency.

By combining immunity exemptions with weak federal liability CISPA will allow spying on users who ultimately are unable to hold companies and the government accountable for their actions.

You can protest against CISPA by sending an e-mail to the Congress, and also use EFF’s Congressional Twitter handle detection tool to tweet the Congress.

Fight for your rights!

ACTA – Current Situation In the US And EU

Recent news provided by the Electronic Frontier Foundation informs us about what’s been going on with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in both the United States and the European Union. Here’s how things are.

As we know by now ACTA is a plurilateral agreement to enforce existing copyright laws on a broader scale. The act itself is an offense to anyone’s democratic rights, in the sense that it bypasses any existing laws regarding your privacy on the internet, without a meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens for all that matters.

In February 2012 the Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request to the U.S. State Department, seeking a copy of the “Circular 175” memorandum for ACTA, and the accompanying Memorandum of Law – key documents regarding the constitutionality of ACTA.

In October 2011 U.S. Trade Ambassador Ronald Kirk signed ACTA at a ceremony in Tokyo. There are two questions that continue to be the catalyst of heated debates: Is ACTA going to bind with the U.S. Government? And should the Congress have any role in reviewing ACTA? Congressional representatives have recently been busy with highlighting the secretive process used to negotiate ACTA (compare to other IP agreements), and the efforts taken to avoid normal Congressional review of the agreement.

Starting with 2008 the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office (USTR) has been trying to convince the public that ACTA was negotiated as a “sole executive agreement” under the President’s power to conclude agreements regarding matters delegated to the President under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, and therefore does not need the Congress’ review nor approval.

This kind of thinking has been criticized by leading U.S. Constitutional Law professors and the EFF itself on several occasions (pdf 1, pdf 2, pdf 3, pdf 4). In his letter to the President Senator Ron Wyden raised the following problem: does the U.S. Executive Branch (the USTR is part of) have constitutional authority to negotiate and enter into an agreement dealing with issues within the powers delegated exclusively to Congress under the Constitution, like the power to make new IP laws:

“The statement by the USTR confuses the issue by conflating two separate stages of the process required for binding the U.S. to international agreements: entry and implementation. It may be possible for the U.S. to implement ACTA or any other trade agreement, once validly entered, without legislation if the agreement requires no change in U.S. law. But, regardless of whether the agreement requires changes in U.S. law, a point that is contested with respect to ACTA, the executive branch lacks constitutional authority to enter a binding international agreement covering issues delegated by the Constitution to Congress’ authority, absent congressional approval.”

The issue at hand is that if ACTA is to be considered a treaty, it would need the approval of two-thirds of the Senate before ratification. A view shared by Congressional Representative Darrel Issa who said on March the 6th that the decision to negotiate ACTA as a sole executive agreement can be seen as an act of abusing power.

In addition, Senator Wyden asked the State Department for its analysis on why the USTR’s negotiation of ACTA complies with US constitutional law. Howard Koh – Legal Advisor to the State Deparment – responded to Senator Wyden on March 6. From his letter we understand that the Congress had authorized the Executive to negotiate ACTA in response to the 2008 Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act.

“The ACTA was negotiated in response to express Congressional calls for international cooperation to enhance enforcement of intellectual property rights. Congress has passed legislation explicitly calling for the Executive Branch to work with other countries to enhance enforcement of intellectual property rights. For example, the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008, Pub. L. No. 110-403, codified at 15 U.S.C. 8113(a), calls for the Executive Branch to develop and implement a plan aimed at “eliminating ..international counterfeiting and infringement networks” and to “work with other countries to establish international standards and policies for the effective protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights.” The ACTA helps to answer that legislative call.”

The U.S. Trade Ambassador followed suit at a hearing in the U.S. Senate’s Trade Subcommittee on 7 March, quoting from the State Department’s letter, suggesting that the Congress had indeed authorized the Executive to negotiate ACTA, and that the agreement was fit for the United States, In other words, the Congress has no role in reviewing and approving ACTA.

Such statements are in contradiction with the previous statements given by the USTR that ACTA does not create a binding obligation on the United States.

“That makes us wonder whether something has changed, or whether the previous statements were made without internal U.S. government legal vetting,” writes EFF’s article.

“Second, in citing the PRO-IP Act of 2008, the State Department’s letter highlights the haphazard and unusual way in which ACTA has been concluded. The letter from the State Department suggests that ACTA came about to help “answer the legislative call” of the PRO-IP Act, even though ACTA was announced the year before, in October 2007. Although the State Department’s letter stopped short of calling ACTA a Congressional-Executive Agreement, it certainly seemed intended to give that impression. But outside of the clear terms of the PRO –IP Act, it would be misleading to suggest that Congress gave the Executive full rein to enter into an international agreement with broad IP enforcement powers that would restrict Congress from engaging in domestic reform of controversial parts of U.S. law.

ACTA also includes a new ACTA Committee that will have the final say on ACTA’s implementation in national law. By enacting the PRO-IP Act, did Congress intend to hand power to determine what should be in US law to the new non-elected ACTA Committee? We suspect many Congressional members would find this problematic, adding to the impression that the PRO-IP Act was a justification found after the fact,” further reads EFF’s report.

Senator Wyden was not happy with the State Department’s response, and on March 19 he tabled several amendments to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (H.R. 3606). They were not adopted due to the short timetable for Congressional review of that Bill, but the first amendment would have prevented ACTA from being ratified “without the formal and express approval of Congress.”

In February the EFF submitted a FOIA request to the U.S. State Department, seeking a copy of the “Circular 175” memorandum for ACTA, and the accompanying Memorandum of Law. As the State Department’s website states, the Circular 175 procedure is the way that the State Department “seeks to confirm that the making of treaties and other international agreements by the United States is carried out within constitutional and other legal limitations, with due consideration of the agreement’s foreign policy implications, and with appropriate involvement by the State Department.”

The State Department is obliged to have these documents ready, for all treaties and other international instruments that bind the United States as a matter of international law under 22 CFR Part 181. Besides EFF, the American University have also submitted a FOIA request for these documents in March 2012.

Circular 175 memoranda must be accompanied by a Memorandum of Law prepared by the Office of the Legal Advisor in the State Department. The Memo of Law usually includes:

- A discussion and justification of the designation given to the proposed agreement (treaty vs. executive agreement);

- An explanation of the legal authority for negotiating and/or concluding the proposed agreement, including an analysis of the Constitutional powers relied upon as well as any pertinent legislation;

- An analysis of the issues surrounding the agreement’s implementation as a matter of domestic law (e.g., whether the agreement is self-executing, whether domestic implementing legislation or regulations will be necessary before or after the agreement’s execution).

With that in mind we realize that ACTA is a matter of huge importance for both US citizens and for other European countries that are negotiating the agreement.

CISPA – A New Way To Spell SOPA

photocredit: knowyourmeme

Le Roi est mort, vive la Roi!  Not long after SOPA was boycotted by the entire internet community, the US House of Representatives is already replacing it with the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
CISPA or H.R. 3532 is, in essence, just another name for its dead relative – SOPA, if not worse. According to this bill the act of copyright infringement will be considered a security threat, and it has already gained over 100 supporters. If the bill passes, ISPs alongside with other companies will be forced to share user data with government agencies.

“CISPA would let companies spy on users and share private information with the federal government and other companies with near-total immunity from civil and criminal liability. It effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity’ exemption to all existing laws,” says the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The “language” used in CISPA is just as confusing as it was with SOPA; for example, important companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and so on could be forced into intercepting their users’ e-mails, text messages or browsing habits, then share this kind of information between each other, and remove or block any infringing material that’s found. Sounds good, right… some US authorities to watch over your every move on the internet, regardless of your rights for privacy? Why not putting some cameras in our bathrooms as well, just to be sure we’re not downloading anything illegal?

We are eagerly waiting for reactions.

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