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Testing ISP Censorship
ryants writes "As part of a research project, Christian Ahlert ran an interesting experiment. He posted John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, which is clearly in the public domain, on different ISPs. He then sent the ISPs phony copyright violation notices. The results are troubling, with ISPs "acting as judge, jury and private investigator at the same time.""
The actual results are presented in detailed form in a PDF file:
How 'Liberty' Disappeared from the Internet
Or see the Google text version.
I believe their policy is on these matters is their Acceptable Use Policy on this.
If they are in violation of that let them know or you can take it to the Better Business Bearu (at least in the US). I worked for an ISP and went through this before.
Evolution or ID?
not sure if you are kidding or not, but you can find some good info on becoming your own ISP Here.
why not just have the ISP forward the complaint to the "offending" party? why should the ISP be responsible for copyright violations?
There is a clearly defined procedure in the DMCA for ISPs ... on receipt of the complaint, they MUST notify the site owner and MUST take down the material within a certain time.
On their part, the site owner MUST file a reply to the takedown within a certain time. When the ISP gets the reply, which is a legal document swearing to the ownership of the material, they MUST restore the material or allow its reposting (the ISP's part is over).
The complaining party (the claimant to the copyright) MUST at this point either file a formal copyright infringement suit in the federal court closest to the web site owner's place of business or shut up. Repeat complaints are NOT allowed.
It'd be better off being summarized and turned into a Op/Ed piece. The paper itself seems very sound in structure, setting up methods and procedures for experimenting, developing a hypothesis and all the remaining factors for a good research paper. However, to have spent so much time in preparation for a sample of 2 is like spending a whole year prepping for a 10 second race.
Just my critical view of it, after several Associates, a Bachelors, Masters and starting on a second Masters degree.
ranted, he tested only 2 Internet Providers, but this could become a new form of DoS if providers just started shutting down sites without doing some research.
In the US it is simple. If they take it down they have to let you know. If not then sue. Unless it is residential in the AUP and they say they don't need to contact you for taking something like that down. Then you can't argue cause they informed you of the AUP. But, I'm sure you could still sue. If it was for business then they have to or sue. America fun by the lawyers. I knew I picked the wrong field. Even if someone is broke they can still be sued
Evolution or ID?
When you send a take-down complaint, you MUST swear (as in a legal swearing subject to perjury charges) that you are indeed the holder of the copyright on the material you are complaining about. Make a nuiisance of yourself and you can have some interesting chats with the Feds and your victim's lawyers.
Read the PDF at the bottom of the linked article- he missed several references to 'Lycos', apparently the US ISP.
I own the copyright to all messages posted by your user "hackstraw". Please delete his account and everything in it immediately.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Lycos - on page 21, where he has shoddily neglected to blank it out. Ironic, as Lycos is actually owned by Terra, a Spanish (EU) ISP.
I agree that this study is a very good idea; I just wish he could have done it a bit better and more thoroughly. Two ISPs, one from the US, one from the EU, is simply not enough to draw any sort of conclusion.
Ignoring the other comments that talk about the sample size being small, and that this "censorship" is being conducted by private companies, not the government, I still think this is off base.
He seems to have the assumption that we should attempt to create some method of governance for this kind of thing. Why is that necessary? Individuals can already self-regulate ISPs that do this stuff - they can switch to another ISP. Governmental regulation or policing of this is problematic. This implies some sort of governmental body. If you don't like the people who are running that body, you can only vote them out once every election cycle. However, in the current system, if you don't like the governance of your ISP, you can vote them out as frequently as you like - there's no law that says you can only switch ISPs once every election cycle.
I disagree with the premise that the only solution to prevent this type of silliness is to create a regulating body. That makes things much worse because it eliminates choice. Instead of rewarding the ISPs with the sensible behavior, they'll all have to behave identically. No more voting with your dollars. Additionally, this will likely lead to price increases for ISP services. Those ISPs that didn't activelly enforce this stuff today (the good ones) now will have to. A cost that will certiainly be passed to the customers.
IMHO: this is a good problem to solve, but the wrong assumption on how to fix it.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
And look at counternotices on: this page
There is a formal procedure that ISPs follow, and considerable protection for both the copyright owner and the page owner.
According to research, the ISPs in question are Lycos for the US ISP (mentioned directly in the PDF a few times where he probably meant to x out) and Wanadoo (note in the PDF that their site was johannamuhle.mysite.xxxxx.com, and that Wanadoo hosts sites under that DNS).
Keep in mind that I could be wrong here, this is only from some quick research on Google.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This actually is not true, much to my sadness. The only "penalty of perjury" claim is that you represent a copyright owner. You must say that you have good faith cause to believe that the copyrights of whoever you represent are violated, but thats not a "penalty of perjury" clause. This is why spurious DMCA claims are so easy.
If you feel that you have been a victim of Internet abuse which took place in part or completely on the Comcast Network, please report the incident to abuse@comcast.net. Make sure to include the date and time of the incident, log files, spam examples or any other information that may be useful to the investigation and verification of the incident as well as your name and phone number or e-mail address so we may contact you directly.
Even though the exact nature of the investigation isn't specified, they at least indicate that they will investigate. Unfortunately, not all ISP's will have a policy so users may wish to choose a provider that has a clear policy to avoid disruption. I imagine though that major web sites will get a better investigation than I would running a little "this is what I did on my summer vacation" site.
I also on a side note the writter of this story doesn't really under stand the meaning of censorship. Only a government can censor a person, a private company does not have this ability.
Also as a side note you cannot censor published content, you can restrict it, but the litteral word of censor is not possible to do on published content. So the government can never censor published content.
Ok now, from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:
censor: A person authorized to examine books, films, or other material and to remove or suppress what is considered morally, politically, or otherwise objectionable.
censoring: (1) counterintelligence achieved by banning or deleting any information of value to the enemy [syn: censorship, security review]
(2) deleting parts of publications or correspondence or theatrical performances [syn: censorship]
Nothing about only the gov't having the power to censor. Anyone or group can censor. See the Wikipedia for more info.
DMCA covers text.
:)
:)
For example, if you decrypt the following and/or post the plaintext I could in theory use the DMCA against you. No, I won't actually do it. I do wonder how soon someone will in fact post a decryption of it here. And how long before someone posts a one-line Perl script decrypter and makes it open-source.
Zpv Tmbtiepu hfflt offe up hp pvutjef npsf.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I am not a lawyer. This is a lay person's opinion.
In the US, if the government actually asks a non-government entity to act on its behalf in a law enforcement related matter such as gathering evidence, the accused has the same rights as if an official representitive of the government did it. Ergo, if at government request, your ISP acts in a manner not allowed LE personnel, both they, and the government person requesting it are subject to all the usual lawsuits sometimes brought against the police, i.e. for tampering with communications, (often invoked in the 60's and ocvcasionally since for wiretapping or opening mail without a court order), wrongful siezure of property, or even vandalism (for wrongful distruction of property, i.e. they purged your files).
Police Depts. pay substantially for insurance against just such suits. Since most ISPs don't, the people who are carrying out the orders are probably being very foolish. This applies to non-government people who are actually asked to censor by the government. If the government can't legally do it itself, and carries insurance just to mitigate the damages of making a mistake, why do you want to do it for them when you don't even have the same level of protection?
Who is John Cabal?
Not like Agent Smith or anything, but at my old job, I handled security and DMCA related issues. We constantly get tons and tons of notices from music and movie groups about coyprighted material. Not once out of over 300 notices has one ever been incorrect. The person has admitted that they were doing something stupid, like sharing over Kazaa, and that they wouldn't do it again.
I am all for IP rights and I am a follower of Lessig's work, but sometimes, you have to face facts. The vast, vast, vast majority of time, the complaint is legitimate, and the ISPs have a legal obligation to act upon the DMCA notices. Unfortunately, I feel that sometimes, especially on Slashdot, people latch onto a few cases, and use them as the basis of judging everything, which is definitely biased. Yes, the system is not perfect, sometimes notices are incorrect, due to human or computer error. Mistakes happen, regardless of the system. Just look at how many times stories get double posted on Slashdot.