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Category: Internet
Icelandic porn filter is overkill
<Originally a Webwereld column – in Dutch>
In the middle of election season in Iceland a debate is raging about the need to protect young children from violent pornographic imagery that can be found on the Internet. Although it is unclear what the scale of this problem is, there is concern about the methods used by some in the porn industry to market their wares. There is an idea that some firms use the old tobacco industry method of ‘get them while they’re young’.
As I was in Iceland recently I was fortunate enough to be asked my opinions on these matters by government officials. The entire debate is being conducted during election season, so the local media are on top of every word uttered by anyone from either government or the local digital civil liberties organisations. What causes most of the (international) attention is the specific plan to put a national filter on all Icelandic internet connections. This would be a first for a western democracy (although such filters have been tried in various Asian countries from Iran to China). Proposing a method that could very well be called censorship is incongruous in a modern and progressive society such as Iceland (the only country to have convicted its bankers over their part in the current global financial crisis).
Within a few hours of setting foot on Iceland I was asked by Smari McCarthy of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative to sign their letter of protest (by now published) against the filtering proposal.
During an informal dinner a few days later with officials it became clear that no decision on a filter, or any other policy, had been made. The government was looking into the problem and discussing possible solutions. The emotive nature of the debate causes the problems and solutions to get mixed up. I therefore attempted to structure the discussion over dinner:
Goals:
1. minimizing the harm caused by violent/degrading imagery to young children in Iceland;
2. fighting the industry that makes money out of degrading humans.
As stated I think it is vital to see these as separate goals that may require completely separate policies. The first is clearly an Icelandic state issue, the second may require a multi-national approach, altough there could be things Iceland can do to ‘not be part of the problem by funding this stuff’.
Methods:
1. The problem with a national filter on certain forms of internet traffic is that these filters work very poorly. This is because of the rapid speed of technological innovation on the supply side and the high creativity in circumventing the filter on the demand side. Once a filter-circumvention method has been found by one person, this knowledge will spread rapidly until it is everywhere. There are even special websites made by-and-for kids on how to circumvent filters and blocking software installed by parents/teachers/governments (their motto: ‘it is not a crime to be smarter than your parents’).
So the Icelandic government would open up a two-front technological info-war against both the porn industry (the very people who invented things like video-streaming over the internet) and its own citizens, some of whom may have a legitimate (if hard to understand) desire to watch certain content. Aside from the fact that forbidding things that are not perceived by their consumers to be harmful, this also makes the forbidden fruit more interesting for young people developing their independence and testing the limits of society.
But let us assume that some day in the future a filter is developed through a technical miracle (these sometimes do occur). Now you have built a working turnkey censorship infrastructure. The key question then is – who is actually in control of this infrastructure? Can you trust all possible future Icelandic governments or civil servants with the power to selectively turn off sources of information to all of Iceland?
In light of all the anti-terrorism laws being deployed against journalists, environmental and peace activists, and even citizens who fail to seperate all their rubbish appropriately, this is not a theoretical problem.
2. Now for the porn industry and options for taking it down (assuming for the sake of discussion that this could be a legitimate objective for a government). In my view the best and most practical thing that Iceland can do is to be very minimalist and selective in enforcing US-style copyright. Cutting off the money supply is a very concrete and easy thing that much of the Internet is already doing to the porn industry. Instead of frustrating this process, as many governments seem to be doing, the Icelandic government should welcome it. Thus making sure that those who want such online content can get it without sending money to these organisations. People make porn to make money. Take away their business model, and the business will go away as well.
I do, however, remain puzzled by one question: how precisely does the porn industry make money from kids? Do children have credit cards? I would find it hard to believe that these companies are doing things in the hope of a new customer 9 years from now. The tobacco analogy only goes so far: cigarettes are usually bought in cash, online porn with credit card or paypal. The lack of statistics about the problem (how many kids have been affected: 5, 500, 5000? And how do we come by these numbers?) is also a problem.
Forbidden fruits vs managing the problem
Like drugs, porn and gambling will never be completely removed from society as long as certain people want them. But the problems they cause can be managed and minimised. Attempts at banning things are usually not the most effective way to reduce harm. Even the banning of ‘child porn’ (a complete misnomer as it is actually imagery of child abuse) has not clearly led to fewer children being harmed by the production of it. Production and distribution has gone so deeply underground that nobody really knows what is going on anymore. The fact that researching/discussing these issues is a now a legal minefield does not help the situation.
Meanwhile these laws have provided a very nice way to destroy almost any individual simply by hacking their PC/laptop/phone (usually fairly trivial), putting some forbidden material on it and reporting them to the police. Even if they are not convicted and sent to prison, their career and social standing will probably be destroyed beyond repair. Proving one’s innocence in such a case is nearly impossible.
The strangest point is that despite the heavy crackdown on images of child abuse, western police forces rarely take down known servers on their own soil. The idea that making imagery of child abuse (aka ‘child porn’) invisible by technical means somehow results in the reduction of harm to children is widespead. Despite the actual harm being done during the production phase of the material rather than during the distribution phase.
Because the subject invokes such strong emotions many politicians (and their staff) will often make a strange logical leap. It goes like this:
1. this problem is terrible, we must do something;
2. this (a filter, ban, deploying the army) is something;
3. we must do this.
In the process of formulating soundbites for the evening news, the fact that something may be completely ineffective in solving the problem and also has major negative effects on society is forgotten. We see these kind of mental illogical-leaps all the time in areas like ‘the War on Terror’, ‘the War on Drugs’ and ‘Cyber-security’, where the solutions clearly fail and, in fact, cause massive new problems that are often worse than the original issue.
Much of the above casts serious doubt on the true goals and priorities of the government. Are we busy hiding stuff we would rather not see, or are we working on protecting children?
I have strongly suggest that the Icelandic government considers the above and uses any budget, allocated for filters, for improving sex-education in schools and support for addictions in the heathcare system. This may not yield immediate results but will most certainly do more good than implementing technical solutions that either do not work or make Iceland into an informational dictatorship.
Update: Despite a change of power the debate over this continues in Iceland. Strangly still with a complete lack of statistical info on the scale of the problem.
In memoriam: Aaron Schwarz 1986 – 2013
Not sure what to say about the sudden death of Aaron Schwarz, idealist, freedom-fighter-extraordinaire and friend of open access to information for all of humanity. Aaron spend his life fighting for humanity’s highest ideals, contributing to technologies most of us use every day (even if we don’t know it). It just feels like something is very, very wrong is the so-called ‘free world’ is killing its best and brightest for living up to its highest ideals. We’ve got big problems and cannot afford to lose people like Aaron.
Cory Doctorow has written a eulogy here, Prof Lawrence Lessig had an overview of the case the US Department of Justice (ha!) saw fit to launch against Aaron. Glen Greenwald wrote about his heroic work in helping to defeat SOPA over the last years. A digital memorial to Aaron will be here for as long as there is an Internet. The files that started the case can be found here. Spread them around as wisely as possible.
But mostly just watch Aaron’s speeches and interviews, as many times as needed before you understand his ideas and ideals fully.
Update 28-06-2014: A documentary on the case Aaron Swartz – The Internet’s Own Boy is now available online. Also on Archive.org.
Privacy, a decade on
<originally a column for Webwereld – in Dutch>
On July 11th 2001 the European Parliament published a report on the Echelon spy network and the implications for European citizens and businesses. Speculations about the existence of this network of Great Britain-and-her-former-colonies had been going on for years but it took until 1999 for a journalist to publish a report that moved the subject out of the tinfoil-hat- zone. The report of the EU Parliament contains very practical and sensible proposals, but because of events two months after publication, they have never been implemented. Or even discussed further.
Under the heading "Measures to encourage self-protection by citizens and enterprises" lists several concrete proposals for inproving data security and confidentiality of communications for EU citizens. The document calls on Parliament to inform citizens about the existence of Echelon and the implications for their privacy. This information must be "accompanied by practical assistance in designing and implementing comprehensive protection measures, including the security of information technology". So not just some abstract government infomercial on TV/radio but hands-on tips to get some actual work done please!
Appropriate measures
Other gems are the requests to "take appropriate measures to promote, develop and manufacture European encryption technology and software and, above all, to support projects aimed at developing user encryption technology, which are open-source" and "promote software projects whose source text is published, thereby guaranteeing that the software has no "back doors" built in (the so-called "open source software") ". The document also mentions explicitly the unreliability of security and encryption technologies whose source code is not published. This is an issue that is a strict taboo in Dutch and UK discussions on IT strategy for governments (probably because some major NATO partners might be offended).
Also, governments must set a good example to each other and their citizens by "systematic use of encryption of e-mails, so that in the longer term this will be normal practice." This should in practice be realised by "ensuring the training and publication of their staff with new encryption technologies and techniques by means of the necessary practical training and courses." Even candidate countries of the EU should be helped "if they cannot provide the necessary protection by a lack of technological independence". Unfortunately to this day I cannot send encrypted mails to officials and the vast majority of them do not even digitally sign their emails to allow me to verify the integrity of the content. Despite the fact the software that makes this possible has been available as open source since before publication of the report in 2001.
That one paragraph from the summer of 2001, when rational security policies had not yet been destroyed by September 11th, decribes the basis for a solid IT policy that ensures security and privacy of citizens against threats from both foreign actors and the government itself.
What a difference a decade makes …
Last Monday Privacy First organised a lecture & discussion evening on cyber security and the relationship with terrorism. Will van Gemert, director of National Cyber ??Security for the Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security gave a lecture on the relationship between privacy and security. In this lecture there was much talk about consumers, little about people/citizens (perhaps the difference is a bit foggy from the windows of government skyscrapers in The Hague). He also insisted that the Government is very much working with ‘the market’ and private parties. It was probably meant to be reassuring but had the opposite effect on most attendees. Ideas from the EU document mentioned above, such as better IT education, open source encryption and technological diversity as defensive tactics, were unfortunately completely unknown concepts. The ribbon on the doors of the Cyber ??Security section of the National Counter Terrorism organisation had just been cut ,so perhaps things will be better in a year. We can but hope*.
A few weeks earlier, another of our government speakers defending even more colourfully the Clean IT project at a meeting of RIPE (the organization that distributes IP addresses for Europe and Asia). Clean-IT is a European project of Dutch origin which aims to combat the use of the Internet for terrorist purposes.
Terrorism is not defined
The problem with this goal is that ‘internet’, ‘use’ and ‘terrorism’ remain undefined, nor is anyone very interested in sorting this out. This in itself can useful if you are a government because you can then take a project in any direction you like. A bit like when data retention was rammed through the EU parliament in 2005 with the promise that it would be used only against "terrorism" – a promise that within a few months was broken. In Germany, data retention has now been declared unconstitutional and been abolished, while in the Netherlands we have rampant tapping, despite a total lack of evidence of the effectiveness of these measures. That all the databases of retained telecommunications data themselves become a target is not something that seems to be seriously taken into account in the threat analyses. All rather worriying for a government that is still usually unable to secure its own systems properly or ensure that hired private parties do so.
Also, during the lecture on Clean-IT much emphasis was placed on the public-private partnership to reassure the audience, yet this had a predominantly opposite effect. It’s strange that a government first proves itself incompetent by outsourcing all expertise, then it comes back after ten years and claims it cannot control those same comapnies, nor indeed their sub-contractors. The last step is then to outsource to companies that used as reassurance to citizens commented: "We let by companies do it! That you as a citizen do not think that we ourselves with our sausage fingers sit! Come all good". After Diginotar my confidence in the guiding and supervisory capacity of the government has dropped to just above absolute zero.
What a difference in approach between the summer of 2001 and today.
Terrorism is obviously the "access all areas pass" – but many more Europeans die slipping in the shower or from ill-fitting moped helmets than from "terrorism". Moreover, we as Europeans have experience of dealing with terrorism. ETA, IRA and RAF were rendered harmless in previous decades by police investigations, negotiations and encapsulation. This was done without jeopardizing the civic rights of half a billion European citizens. Even when weekly IRA bombs exploded in London nobody suggested dropping white phosphorous on Dublin or Belfast.
Hope
I hope* that the pre-9/11 vision of the EU Parliament will finally penetrate the Dutch Ministry of Security and Justice (formerly just ‘Justice’ soon ‘Love‘?). Perhaps a new cabinet will lead to new initiatives and opportunities? It would be nice if the ‘free West’ could develop a policy that would justify our moral superiority towards Russia, when we demand that they stop political censorship under the guise of "security".
* Hope: the desire for a future situation over which you have little or no influence: "I hope my plane does not crash."
The Declaration of Independence of Internet
(Orginal from 1776 here. Orginal from 1581 that is the inspiration for the original from 1776 here)
hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for people to dissolve the commercial, legal and moral bands which have connected them with an industry and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which their most fundamental principles entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all lives are enriched by the sharing of culture, that citizens are endowed by their democracies with certain unalienable rights, that among these are knowledge, true ownership of their property and the sharing of culture. That to secure these rights, laws are instituted among the people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any of these laws become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish them, and to institute new laws, laying their foundations on such principles and organizing their powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that laws long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such laws, and to provide new guards for their future cultural wealth. Such has been the patient sufferance of the people of the Internet; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of cultural distribution. The history of the present copyright industry is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over the culture of the people of Earth. These are just some of the effects of the lobbying of the copyright-industry:
The destruction of our cultural heritage by forced obliteration and decay, by forbidding or hindering the reduplication and sometimes even the restoration of cultural artifacts. – The destruction of our future, by frustrating education and the sharing of knowledge, thereby condemning many to lower life standards than they could otherwise achieve, especially in developing countries. – The destruction of the creative process, by legally forcing artists and authors to steer clear of any sources of inspiration, and punishing them for accidental similarities and citations. – The destruction of free access to key, contentious pieces of political information by preventing maximum distribution of this information. – The destruction of human and natural resources, by forcing the re-creation of works that would be perfectly usable with some minor rework, but not allowing such re-use. – The destruction of social and economic order, by allowing the control of much of our heritage to end up in just a few hands. Leading to a society where a few have a lot, and a lot have little. – The destruction of innocent lives by transporting citizens of other nations beyond Seas to be tried for offences that are not even offences in their home nations …
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. Corporations, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define tyrants, are unfit to be conduit of culture for a free people. Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our corporate cultural overlords. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their lobbying to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the limits of our patience and the growing existence of alternatives to their wares. The most recent efforts of the copyright industry to circumvent our most fundamental democratic institutions leaves us no choice but to defend our culture by taking it out of the hands of these corporations.
We, therefore, the Pirates of the World, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of the Internet, solemnly publish and declare, that we are free and united, and no longer recognize the legal or moral validity of the copyright claims of aforementioned corporations, that we are absolved from all legal and moral allegiance to these corporations, and that all connections between the people of the Internet and the copyright industry is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and Independent people, we have full power to download, distribute, remix, broadcast, perform and to do all other acts and things which Independent people may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on strong cryptological protection, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred bandwidth
printable version for those ink-based-real-life signing parties here
ACTA; war over. We win. Again
<originally a Dutch Webwereld.nl column>
According to Dutch Economics Minister Maxime Verhagen, ‘ordinary’ people have nothing to fear from ACTA. This treaty is merely designed to shut down child pornography sites. Go to the link and have another listen (in Dutch), because he really does say this!
That’s good because, although I quite like a good download, I tend to limit myself to movies and books that fall a little more within the acceptable media spectrum. However, this statement gives us a fascinating glimpse into the mind of our Minister-of-All. Apparently in the case of distribution of photographic evidence of actual child abuse he is first and foremost concerned with possible copyright infringement. Is this a professional contortion or is he simply exceptionally goal orientated? This is what journalists should be pouncing on. For the lulz.
But beauty emerges even from the surrealist farce that is modern western copyright policy. No, I’m not talking about more music, movies or books, for there is no evidence that more culture is created by fanatically prosecuting 14-year olds for downloading. However, the recent weeks have clearly shown the usefulness of a common enemy. Thanks to ACTA, more Europeans than ever are involved in a critical discussion of modern copyright law and the balance with civil liberties. That is a wonderful development. Furthermore, it now seems that ACTA is dying following the remarks of European Commissioner Viviane Reding (she senses the political climate). One European country after another is delaying signing the treaty. In the three years since the “crisis” citizens have developed a fairly sharp bullshit filter to detect the kind of neo-liberal nonsense that ACTA is full of, and they will take no more. Like Software Patents it always takes awhile for the protests to get going but once they go representatives tend to choose the side of the people who can get them in a seat by voting in a few years.
Closer to home, the Brein lawsuit against internet providers Ziggo and XS4all to block The Piratebay generated a lot of media attention, it was a marketing campaign money can’t buy. Millions of Dutch people who had never heard of the site saw it discussed for several nights on the evening news. The forbidden always tastes sweet and an increase of users will be the logical consequence. Really, has anyone realistically suffered from the blockade that BREIN fought so hard for? Anyone? Bueler? The hugely successful operation against MegaUpload made worldwide headlines and caused a dip in filesharing….. which lasted all of 48 hours. And it produced advertising for such services and concepts on a scale that even Kim Dotcom could not have financed. So thanks for that.
The only result of all that copyright industry lobbying and lawsuits over the last 15 years has been an exceptionally rapid technological innovation towards an extremely decentralized media distribution. After the most recent attack, The PirateBay compressed its entire database to 90MB. If your phone has Bluetooth 2.0, you can share that with your neighbor during a subway ride. Because sharing is caring, right? As the great politicl philosopher Princess Leia once remarked to the Empire "the more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers".
There is still some muttering about ‘illegal downloading’ in the media and among astro-turfers. Except that it is not actually illegal in the Netherlands, not that facts have ever been a strong point of the copyright lobbyists. So let’s permanently eliminate any misunderstanding. There are two ways to look at copyright issues: legal and moral.
The Dutch law is simple. Legally you can make a copy for personal use, regardless of both the nature of the source and of the author’s wishes or intentions. "Illegal downloading” does not exist because … (wait for it) … it is legal. It is not "theft" because we would not need copyright is it was theft. We could just apply normal property rights. The very existence of the concept copyright indicates these are not the same. Anyone who still continues to peddle such nonsense is at best uninformed or a lawyer at DLA Piper. But I repeat myself.
A moral perspective on copyright is much more complex because we also have to consider the morality of the law itself (the fact that something is the law does not make it morally right – slavery and torture were once also permitted by law). In addition, it is important to consider how these laws are set up. What ACTA has very sharply highlighted is that modern copyright law is a snake pit of international lobbies, businesses and lying politicians, and deceived MPs and citizens who are deliberately kept in the dark.
Discussing copyright from a moral perspective without including this aspect seems absurd to me. What ACTA has demonstrated is that we shall no longer be bound by a moral law that has been democratically established or debated by our representatives. We have to determine what is moral and what is not in this area because the law clearly provides no such support.
And since the copyright industry is not about to enter into a real debate the outcome is inevitable: in ten or twenty years we will have an exchange between representatives of the remnants of the entertainment industry and the descendants of The PirateBay. It will resemble the famous statement of US Colonel Summers to his Vietnamese counterpart: "You know, you never beat us on the battlefield …". Whereupon Colonel Tu said, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."
Just as in any guerrilla war, the "insurgents" have won, and for the same reasons: they are smarter, more flexible, have broad popular support and all the time in the world. A sensible entertainment executive would do well to read some history books and learn some lessons about the conduct of guerrilla conflicts and the consequences of losing. Hint: the US struggled for a quarter of a century with its Vietnam syndrome, and the Soviet Union did not survive defeat in Afghanistan.
War over. We win. Music anyone?
Internet, Privacy, Copyright; Choose Two
The Dutch Considerati think tank reported earlier this week that there is still widespread downloading in the Netherlands. But for an allegedly ‘broad’ piece of research, some key parties were missing – Bits of Freedom, for example. Nor did the study consider fundamental questions about the social or economic value of copyright that lasts for more than a century (when once it only lasted for 15 years), probably because those ordering the report did not want that question asked, let alone answered. There was also no mention of the copyright industry aggressively lobbying behind closed doors where laws are hammered out that our European representatives are not even allowed to see, let alone influence.
The entire debate is reduced to a financial accounting exercise for a particular industry. So all is perfectly OK then, as I have nothing to do with it – I don’t work in that industry – nor indeed do the vast majority of people. The comments on Webwereld.nl quickly show that almost nobody takes such research seriously.
A lawyer from the American RIAA recently added some colour by saying that the public domain blocked free market capitalism. So much honesty can be scary sometimes. But the recent high point of the "e"G8 meeting in Paris was when Sarokozy and a few captains-of-industry gathered to decide what we should be allowed to do with our internet in the future. In response, a few uninvited representatives of civil liberties organisations held their own press conference (video – Lessig sums it up nicely from 7:00 minutes onwards).
These examples make it absolutely clear that the idea of any reasonable discussion with these vested interests is pure fiction. Wise people like Prof. Lawrence Lessig have been trying to start such a discussion for a decade, without success. Writer and activist Cory Doctorow also tries to find a reasonable ‘middle ground’ between the interests of authors, the copyright industry and the rest of society, and himself provides a good example with his DRM-free books. The copyright industry (or “entertainment industry "in the Considerati report) ensures that any such a discussion is absolutely impossible by claiming industry interests and rights are absolute, without providing much of a broader social context. Large parts of the Considerati report read along the lines that providers of bottled mineral water are losing a lot of money because the local municipality washes its buses with tap water.
This week, a UN report declared that uninhibited access to the internet was a human right. This makes the French HAPODI law (whereby, after three alleged transgressions, the citizen is disconnected) a human rights violation. As long as people have internet access, they will download material. If there is anything to be learned from the internet’s last 15 years, it is that repressive measures against making digital copies always fail. Next year there will be yet more storage, wider bandwidths and cheaper processing power. This will only stop if we give up those basic rights as defined by the UN. A digital police state of Stalinist proportions would be needed to prevent copying. It is not insignificant that it is the copyright industry itself that is blocking any real move towards a wide-ranging public discussion on the reform of copyright.
There is a well-known rule for complex projects: Good, Fast, Cheap – choose two. You can get good and fast but it will cost. Good and cheap is possible, but it may require a little patience. All three at once is usually not possible. We can apply a similar formula to the ‘download debate’:
Internet, Privacy, Copyright; Choose Two.
We can have the internet with the current functionality and openness while maintaining the right to privacy and free speech – but maintaining a 20th-century copyright model at the same time is impossible. Or we could give up our privacy and other civil rights to allow one specific industry to earn money in the same old way for a little longer. A last option would be to switch off the internet. But that is not realistic: a country like the Netherlands could not survive a day without the internet, any more than it could survive without electricity.
As a society we’re going through the painful realisation that we can only have two out of the three options. Different vested-interest groups would no doubt make different choices but, like the vast majority of the people, I opt for the internet and privacy (this symbolises a whole range of civil rights). And thus the outcome of the process is already established, assuming we have a somewhat-functioning democracy (ACTA people do sometimes have doubts about this). Lawrence Lessig once joked during a presentation in Berlin that he, like Gorbachev, wanted to reform the system enough so it could be kept in place. Reform does not appear an option, rather a non-violent revolution is likely to happen.
Like any social change (the abolition of slavery, universal suffrage), this is also accompanied by heated debates, occasional legal sabre rattling and periodic propaganda reports from hired guns. But historically that will be just so much background noise. Maybe there will come a time, in the not too distant future, when basic civil rights make a comeback, upheld by the legislature and supported by the law enforcement agencies.
Until then, we citizens must defend our online rights with technical skills. Privacy can be upheld with crypto. To ensure mobile network neutrality, run all your traffic through a VPN . On a day-to-day basis, it is not crazy to suggest that we should all explore the use of privacy tools more thoroughly.
Debate between HAR2009 en BREIN at Hacking at Random
Close the Loop
Now The Pirate Bay is outlawed in the Netherlands – although this ban has yet to be tested in Dutch courts – the copyright industry and its tame lobbyists face a difficult choice: should they take their customers to court or not?
This question is crucial to the survival of the lobby groups. Since the cost of fighting downloading is much higher than income, large entertainment companies constantly need convincing that all these indirect lobby costs will at least produce results in the longer term. Nobody wants to think that the funding of lobby groups is ineffective, even if those organisations claim hundreds of site removals annually.
The entrenching of the battle lines is probably good for providers of innovative services such as proxies that can run your Internet traffic through other countries. There are also more complex and smarter things that experienced Internet users can do to avoid detection. Like the process of downloading itself, these will become cheaper and more user-friendly in future, so that eventually everybody can use them.
Furthermore, any attempt to tighten online control will make offline sharing more attractive. With terabyte hard disks and 32-gigabyte microSD cards, the bandwidth in your pocket is probably higher than a cable or DSL connection. Technically not much can be done to stop people sharing bits, and the odious behaviour of the industry itself causes any moral objections to evaporate faster than the Greenland ice sheet.
Individuals are now threatened with prosecutions along the lines of the German model (with a 2000 euro fine). But how many of these cases can the already-overworked Prosecution Service realistically process in a year (thanks to other nonsensical bans on certain recreational pharmaceuticals)? Even making a grossly-inflated estimate of 1000 prosecutions a month, that still only results in 24 million euros’ worth of fines per annum – and obviously that’s only if they win every case, which is highly unlikely.
If the companies in the copyright industry actually take this step and go to legal war with their customers, it will not take long for someone to set up an online cultural solidarity fund. By becoming a contributor to that fund for a couple of euros per month, individuals can rely on specialist legal advice if they become one of the the unfortunate 0.2-0.4% to be sued in any given year. With 1 million members contributing even 2 euros each month, you would quickly have a well-endowed war chest behind you, should you end up in court. Let’s make the copyright lawyers work harder for their putative 24 million.
As the case against Ziggo and XS4ALL demonstrated, copyright lawyers don’t have nearly as much fun if their opponents fight back with a competent legal team. To gamble untold millions on legal costs to gain a paltry 24 million per annum is a risky strategy. Each lost case costs them money, and when you win you gain more members (and thus a larger fund) to take to the next fight. Eventually it would be quite possible that any money remaining in such a fund could be used to create and promote culture. These works would naturally be released under a Creative Commons licence. Of course, the "Bits-Of-Freedom-XS4ALL-Ziggo” Solidarity Fund for Culture and Creativity (just thinking out loud here!) would not allow the creation of more cultural works to be milked through classical copyright.
If such a fund existed to support cultural initiatives transparently and fairly, I would personally like to pay a bit more than 2 euros per month (say 10 euros). Especially when the de facto result is that I can make unlimited downloads – without having to worry that some copyright lawyers in the Netherlands apparently don’t know the difference between copyright infringement and theft (and yet are still employed as lawyers!).
Unlimited, risk-free digital culture for a tenner a month would be enough even for Maecenas – true wealth!