Internet Censorship: SOPA, PIPA, & Big Brother

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InternetUseflickrAdamSelwoodMEDIA ROOTS — A neutral Internet’s First Amendment rights to free speech, dissent, and political activity face serious challenges from Congress and the Obama Administration.  Currently, the House “Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its companion bill in the Senate, the Protect IP Act (PIPA)” are being debated in Congress. 

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has said the “major problem is that they are written to be overly broad and they are written to favour the rights-holders.  And, so, they allow a thing called a private right of action, which means that someone who believes that a [web]site is intended for, or allows, the distribution of their copyrighted material can go directly to that website’s ad networks or payment processors and have them cut off from those sources of revenue.” 

Clearly, SOPA and PIPA amount to a power grab by the legislation’s corporate supporters—Viacom, Netflix, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America, and the AFL-CIO—to alter the structure of the internet in their pro-1% favour.  Today, Democracy Now! spoke with Corynne McSherry, who is the intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation about the website strikes planned for tomorrow by Wikipedia and Reddit, protesting SOPA and PIPA, and Rebecca MacKinnon, author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom about online freedom and its role in cultivating a healthy democracy.

Media Roots is a prime example of the kind of website that could be targeted for aggregating material that may be deemed copyright  under the overarching SOPA and PIPA legislation.  Learn more about the bills and what you can do here.
 

MR

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DEMOCRACY NOW! — Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia and sixth most visited site in the world, will join websites like the content aggregator Reddit to “go dark” on Wednesday [18 Jan 2012] in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its companion bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are currently being debated in Congress. “What these bills propose are new powers for the government and also for private actors to create, effectively, blacklists of sites that allegedly are engaging in some form of online infringement and then force service providers to block access to those sites,” says Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “What we would have is a situation where the government and private actors could censor the net.” Chief technology officials in the Obama administration have expressed concern about any “legislation that…undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” But the bills’ main backers—Hollywood movie studios and music publishers—want to stop the theft of their creative content, and the bills have widespread bipartisan support. A vote on SOPA is on hold in the House now, as the Senate is still scheduled vote on PIPA next Tuesday [1/24/12]. [rush transcript included]


DN!:  “If you want to know more about two controversial internet anti-piracy bills moving through Congress, you won’t be able to consult Wikipedia on Wednesday. The online encyclopedia and sixth most visited site in the world will join websites like the content aggregator Reddit to ‘go dark’ for 12 to 24 hours in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy, or SOPA, Act and its companion bill, the Protect IP Act. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced the decision to bring down his website last night on Twitter, writing, quote, ‘Student warning! Do your homework early. Wikipedia protesting bad law on Wednesday!’

The White House responded over the weekend to two petitions opposing the bills. The administration’s chief technology officials wrote on White House blog Saturday, quote, ‘We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.’

While the White House did not take a definite position on SOPA and the Protect IP Act, it has called for legislation to combat online piracy that has hurt the legislation’s main backers: Hollywood movie studios and music publishers who want to stop the theft of their creative content. Now a vote on SOPA is on hold in the House. The Senate is still scheduled to vote on the piracy issue next Tuesday, a week from today.

Well, to talk more about the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect IP Act, we go to San Francisco to talk Corynne McSherry, who is the intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

We welcome you to Democracy Now! Please explain both of these bills. It’s very tough, I think, for most people to understand the technical aspects of this legislation.”

CORYNNE McSHERRY:  “Sure. In a nutshell, what these bills propose are new powers for the government and also for private actors to create, effectively, blacklists of sites that allegedly are engaging in some form of online infringement and then force service providers to block access to those sites. And that’s why we call these the censorship bills, because effectively what we would have is a situation where the government and private actors could censor the net. So, U.S. citizens would basically get a different version of the internet, different from what you might get in, say, Italy or even China.”

DN!:  “So, explain the difference between SOPA and the Protect IP Act.”

CORYNNE McSHERRY:  “Well, currently they’re quite—they’re quite similar. As drafted, SOPA was much broader than the Protect IP Act, and the folks behind the bill realized that maybe it was a little bit too broad, so they tailored it down. So now they’re quite similar. One of the differences is that SOPA is, finally, after a great deal of activism, more or less on hold for now. But Senator Reid is saying that he’s going to push forward the Protect IP Act, despite all of the opposition.”

DN!:  “And explain who is behind these two acts.”

CORYNNE McSHERRY:  “Well, that’s not a great mystery. Both of these acts are clearly being pushed hard by the big media industries, who seem to think that online piracy is why they’re having trouble, and actually, who insist that they’re having all kinds of trouble and they’re failing immediately if something doesn’t—if legislation isn’t passed immediately, they’re going to all go under, which is not true. In fact, the motion picture industry has been posting record profits for five years straight.”

DN!:  “In a December hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Congress Member Jason Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, talked about the lack of expert consultation in drafting SOPA.”

Rep. Jason Chaffetz:  “I was trying to think of a way to try to describe my concerns with this bill, but basically, we’re going to create—we’re going to do surgery on the internet, and we haven’t had a doctor in the room tell us how we’re going to change these organs. We’re basically going to reconfigure the internet and how it’s going to work, without bringing in the nerds, without bringing in the doctors. And again, I worry that we did not take the time to have a hearing to truly understand what it is we’re doing. And to my colleagues, I would say, if you don’t know what DNSSEC is, you don’t know what you’re doing. And so, my concern is that there is a problem, but this is not necessarily the right remedy.

DN!:  “That was Utah Congress Member Chaffetz. Corynne McSherry, your response?”

Corynne McSherry:  “I think he’s absolutely right. SOPA, in particular, was negotiated without any consultation with the technology sector. They were specifically excluded. And one of the things I think is really exciting, though, is that—you know, no one asked the internet—well, the internet is speaking now. And so, we’re seeing all kinds of opposition all over the web. And there’s going to be a day of action tomorrow. People are really rising up and saying, ‘Don’t interfere with basic internet infrastructure. We won’t stand for it.'”

DN!: What do you make of President Obama’s position on the bill, Corynne?

Corynne McSherry:  “Well, it was heartening to see the White House statement and see the White House sort of stand with the internet and stand with its own commitments against censorship and against online censorship, in particular. Up until recently, we have been very concerned that there seemed to be a contradiction. On the one hand, you had Hillary Clinton criticizing foreign governments for online censorship and for censoring web results and so on. But at the same time, you had these bills rocketing through Congress that would propose very similar things. So, it was good to see the White House stand against that and criticize these bills. On the other hand, I am concerned that the White House seems to think that some kind of legislation needs to be passed this year. And I actually don’t think the case has been made for that.”

DN!:  “Talk about the whole issue of the protection of artists, for example, the music industry and their concerns.”

Corynne McSherry:  “Well, look, there’s no question that there’s plenty of infringement online. That’s been true for a long time now. The question is how you’re going to answer it. And the best way to respond—it’s very clear at this point. The best way to respond to online infringement is to give people a better alternative. And when that happens, people go to that. So that’s the best way to do it. It’s not to pretend that the Pirate Bay doesn’t exist; it’s to give people an alternative to the Pirate Bay. And one of the things that we’ve seen is that, actually, independent artists are taking advantage of new technologies to reach the—reach new audiences. Music fans have more access to more music than they ever had before, and different kinds of music. And that’s what happens when you take advantage of new technologies, as opposed to running away from it.”

DN!:  “Let me read you a tweet that Murdoch sent out this weekend: ‘So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery.'”


Corynne McSherry:  “Well, you know, I think it’s ironic to talk about paymasters, given the amount of money that Hollywood has been spending in Congress to try to ram these bills through. I think it is true that the Obama administration has somewhat stood with Silicon Valley here, but I think Silicon Valley knows how to protect itself against so-called software piracy better than Rupert Murdoch will.”

DN!:  “Finally, the votes, where they stand this week?”
 

Corynne McSherry:  “Well, what we’re seeing now is Harry Reid, Senator Reid, is insisting that he’s going to go forward with a vote next Tuesday on the Protect IP Act. We’ll see what happens over the course of the week. Things have changed a lot. And after the day of action tomorrow, a lot of us are hopeful that Senator Reid will think better of trying to push this bill through, given the level of opposition. It’s really just a bad idea, particularly when you think about what they’re doing here. This is basic internet infrastructure that they’re messing with. And I think that Representative Chaffetz had it exactly right. It’s foolish to go in and interfere with internet infrastructure when you don’t know what you’re doing.”

DN!:  “And overall, SOPA and PIPA, how they’ve been separated?”

Corynne McSherry:  “Well, SOPA seems to be on hold for now. If PIPA is rammed through, it may be that in the House of Representatives they will try to revive SOPA and sort of bring the two bills in line. I certainly hope not, because that would be very, very dangerous for human rights, for internet security, and send an extremely negative signal around the world that the United States government does in fact support censorship, as long as you say that you’re doing it in the name of intellectual property enforcement.”

DN!:  “Corynne McSherry, I want to thank you for being with us, intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. When we come back, we’ll be joined by author Rebecca MacKinnon. She has just written the book, Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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DEMOCRACY NOW! — As protests mount against two controversial internet anti-piracy bills moving through Congress, we speak with Rebecca MacKinnon, author of the forthcoming book, “Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom.” “If we want democracy to survive in the internet age, we really need to work to make sure that the internet evolves in a manner that is compatible with democracy,” MacKinnon says. “And that means exercising our power not only as consumers and internet users and investors, but also as voters, to make sure that our digital lives contain the same kind of protections of our rights that we expect in physical space.” She argues that for every empowering story of the internet’s role, there are many more about the quiet corrosion of civil liberties by companies and governments. [rush transcript included]

 DN! “We’re joined by Rebecca MacKinnon in Washington, D.C., author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom.

“We welcome you to Democracy Now! Rebecca, the internet has been touted as such a tremendous liberating force. When we look at the events of this past year, the uprisings throughout the Middle East, part of the discussion of how that moment came is because of the internet, because of social media. And yet you talk about, more often than not, the internet is being used to spy on, to crack down on—spy on people, crack down on civil liberties. Talk about what you have found and how this relates to the legislation that we’re seeing now being developed in Washington.”

Rebecca MacKinnon:  “Well, thanks very much, Amy, for having me on here today.

“And just to connect my book to the issues that you were just discussing in the previous segment about the Protect IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act, I think the reason why this—these issues are so important for ordinary Americans and really go beyond just sort of a nerdy, geeky technical issue is that in today’s society, we, as citizens, increasingly depend on internet services and platforms, mobile services and platforms, not only for our personal lives and our businesses and our jobs, but also for our political discourse and political activism, getting involved with politics. And so, it’s very important that people who are exercising power, whether they’re corporate or whether they’re government, that are exercising power over what we can see, over what we can access, over what we can publish and transmit through these digital spaces, need to be held accountable, and we need to make sure that power is not being abused in these digital spaces and platforms that we depend on. And so, that’s why this SOPA and PIPA legislation and the fight over it is so important, is who are you empowering to decide what people can and cannot see and do on the internet, and how do you make sure that that power is not going to be abused in ways that could have political consequences. And we’ve actually seen how existing copyright law has sometimes been abused by different actors who want to prevent critics from speaking out.

“But coming back to the Arab Spring, my book is not about whether the good guys or the bad guys are winning on the internet. The internet is empowering everybody. It’s empowering Democrats. It’s empowering dictators. It’s empowering criminals. It’s empowering people who are doing really wonderful and creative things. But the issue really is how do we ensure that the internet evolves in a manner that remains consistent with our democratic values and that continues to support people’s ability to use these technologies for dissent and political organizing. And while the internet was part of the story in the Arab Spring in terms of how people were able to organize, it’s not so clear to what extent it’s going to be part of the story in terms of building stable democracies in countries like Tunisia and Egypt, where the dictators did fall, let alone in a number of other countries.

“In Tunisia, for instance, there is a big argument going on, now that they’ve had their set of democratic elections to the Constitutional Assembly, and they’re trying to write their constitution and figure out how to set up a new democracy. And Tunisia, under Ben Ali, was actually one of the most sophisticated Arab countries when it came to censoring and surveillance on the internet. And quite a number of the people who have been democratically elected in Tunisia are calling for a resumption of censorship and surveillance for national security reasons, to maintain public morals and public order. And there’s a huge debate going on about what is the role of censorship and surveillance in a democracy, and how do you make sure that power is not abused.

“And they turn and look at the United States, they look at Europe, and censorship laws are proliferating around the democratic world. And there’s not sufficient discussion and consideration for how these laws are going to be abused. And we’ve seen, actually, in Europe, with a number of efforts to censor both copyright infringement as well as child pornography and so on, that a lot of this internet blocking that happens, even in democracies, oftentimes exercises mission creep, so things that weren’t originally intended to be blocked end up getting blocked when the systems are in place. It’s really difficult to make sure that the censorship does not spread beyond its original intent. It’s very hard to control. So, this is one of the issues.

“It’s not that the internet isn’t empowering. It’s not that the internet can’t help the good guys—it certainly does. But we’re at a critical point, I think, in history, where the internet is not some force of nature. How it evolves and how it can be used and who it empowers really depends on all of us taking responsibility for making sure it evolves in a direction that’s compatible with democracy, and that it doesn’t empower the most powerful incumbent governments or the most powerful corporations to decide what we can and cannot see and do with our technology.”

 DN! “Rebecca MacKinnon, talk about the phenomenon, Control 2.0.”

Rebecca MacKinnon:  “Right. So, Control 2.0 is what I refer to in terms of how authoritarian governments are evolving in the internet age. And so, one example I use is China. And China, in many ways, is exhibit A for how an authoritarian state survives the internet. And how do they do that? They have not cut off their population from the internet. In fact, the internet is expanding rapidly in China. They now have over 500 million internet users. And the Chinese government recognizes that being connected to the global internet is really important for its economy, for its education, for its culture, for innovation. Yet, at the same time, they have worked out a way to filter and censor the content overseas that they feel their citizens should not be accessing.

“And what’s even more insidious, actually, is the way in which the state uses the private sector to conduct most of its censorship and surveillance. So, actually, what we know as the Great Firewall of China that blocks Twitter and Facebook, that’s only one part of Chinese internet censorship. Actually, most Chinese internet users are using Chinese-language websites that are run by Chinese companies based in China, and those companies are all held responsible for everything their users are doing. And so, they have to hire entire departments of people to monitor their users at the police’s behest and also to not just block, but delete content that the Chinese government believes infringes Chinese law. And, of course, when—in a country where crime is defined very broadly to include political and religious dissent, that involves a great deal of censorship. And it’s being conducted, to a great degree, not by government agents, but by private corporations who are complying with these demands in order to make a profit in China.”

 DN! “Rebecca, talk about specifics, like Facebook, Facebook—changes in Facebook features and privacy settings, exposing identities of protesters to police in Egypt, in Iran. Talk about Google. Talk about Apple removing politically controversial apps.”

Rebecca MacKinnon:  “Right. So, for instance, with Facebook, Facebook has its own kind of type of governance, which is why I call private internet companies the “sovereigns of cyberspace.” And so, Facebook has a rule where it requires that its users need to use their real name, their real identity. And while some people violate that rule, that makes them vulnerable to having their account shut down if they are discovered. And so, the reason they do this is that they want people to be accountable for their speech and prevent bullying and so on. And that may make sense in the context of a Western democracy, assuming that you’re not vulnerable in your workplace or anything like that, which is even a question, but it means that you have to be—as an Egyptian activist or as an activist in Syria and so on, you’re more exposed, because you have to be on Facebook using your real name.

“And actually, a group of prominent activists in Egypt who were using Facebook to organize an anti-torture movement were doing so, before the regime fell, under fake names, and actually, at a critical point where they were trying to organize a major protest, their Facebook group went down, because they were in violation of the terms of service. And they actually had to find somebody in the U.S. to take over their Facebook page so that they could continue to operate.

“And you also have a lot of cases of people in Iran. There have been a number of reports of people being tortured for their Facebook passwords and so on. And the fact that Iranian users are, in most cases, using their real names makes them a great deal more vulnerable.

“And as you know, here in the United States, Facebook recently was subject to a fine and had to reach a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission because of the changes in its privacy settings that had been sudden at the end of 2009. People had made assumptions about whether their friends could be seen or not publicly. Suddenly those settings changed, and it exposed a lot of people in ways that, in some cases, were very dangerous.

“But also, let’s take some other companies and some of the issues that users face. Apple, in its App Store, it has different versions of its App Store in different parts of the world. And their Chinese App Store censors applications that the Chinese government believes to be controversial. So, for instance, the Dalai Lama app in the Apple Store is not available in China. But Apple employees are also making a lot of other judgments about what content is and isn’t appropriate, that goes according to standards that are much more narrow than our First Amendment rights. So, for instance, an American political cartoonist, Mark Fiore, had an app in which he was making fun of a range of politicians, including President Obama, and Apple App Store nannies decided to censor that app, because they considered it to be too controversial, even though that speech was clearly protected under the First Amendment. So you have companies making these judgments that go well beyond sort of our judicial and constitutional process.

“You also have Amazon, for instance, dropping WikiLeaks, even though it had not been accused, let alone, convicted, of any crime, simply because a number of American politicians objected to WikiLeaks. And so, there is this issue of: are companies, in the way in which they operate their services, considering the free expression rights and privacy rights of their users sufficiently to ensure that we’re able to have robust dissent, that people can speak truth to power in a manner that may be making current government officials very, very uncomfortable, but which is clearly protected both under our Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?”

 DN! “Rebecca—”

Rebecca MacKinnon:  “Should we be expecting companies to push back a bit more?”

 DN! “I wanted to ask you about the newly released government documents that reveal the Department of Homeland Security hired the military contractor General Dynamics to monitor postings of U.S. citizens on dozens of websites. The sites monitored included Facebook and Twitter, as well as several news sites, including the New York Times, Wired, The Huffington Post. General Dynamics was asked to collect reports that dealt with government agencies, including CIA, FEMA, ICE. Your thoughts?”

Rebecca MacKinnon:  “Well, this is exactly the kind of issue that we need to deal with in a democracy. Now, if they have been hired to monitor postings that citizens are putting on a public website, I think that’s a reminder that our public information is public and that it’s being mined and watched by all kinds of people. But it’s also an example of why privacy settings are so important and why—why it’s important that people should be able to be anonymous if they want to be on the internet, if they fear consequences or if they fear misuse of the way in which they’re carrying out political discussions that could be used against them in different ways.

“And there’s also a real issue, I think, in the way in which our laws are evolving when it comes to government access to information stored on corporate servers, that is supposed to be private, that we are not intending to be seen in public, which is that, according to the PATRIOT Act and a range of other law that has been passed in recent years, it’s much easier for government agencies to access your email, to access information about your postings on Twitter, even if they’re anonymous, than it is for government agents to come into your home and search your personal effects. To do that, they need a warrant. There is very clear restriction on the government’s ability to read your mail. Yet, according to current law, if your email is older than 180 days old, the government can access your email, if it’s stored on Gmail or Yahoo! or Hotmail, without any kind of warrant or court order. So, there’s a real erosion of our Fourth Amendment rights, really, to protection from unreasonable search and seizure. And this is going on, I think, to a great degree without a lot people realizing the extent to which our privacy rights are being eroded.”

DN! “Rebecca, we have 30 seconds, but the significance of Wednesday, of tomorrow, of Wikipedia and many other websites going dark in protest of the legislation here in the United States? What do you think is the most important issue people should take away from what’s happening and also from your book, Consent of the Networked?”

Rebecca MacKinnon:  “Well, I think the action tomorrow really demonstrates that internet censorship affects everybody, it’s not just affecting people in China, that this is an issue that we all need to be concerned about, and it can happen in democracies as well as in dictatorships.”

And the core message of my book is that if we want democracy to survive in the internet age, we really need to work to make sure that the internet evolves in a manner that is compatible with democracy, and that means exercising our power not only as consumers and internet users and investors, but also as voters, to make sure that our digital lives contain the same kind of protections of our rights that we expect in physical space.”

DN! :  “Rebecca MacKinnon, I want to thank you very much for being with us, senior fellow at the New America Foundation, co-founder of Global Voices Online. Her new book is called Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom.”

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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Photo (above) by Flickr user Adam Selwood

Photo (feature) by Flickr user Monkey Man Forever

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