Tag Archive for: Moves

European Parliament Moves Forward With ‘Terrorist Content’ Regulation That Will Lead To Massive Internet Censorship

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Last week we wrote (not for the first time) about the really dreadful Terrorist Content Regulation making its way through the EU regulatory process. As we noted, this is Article 13 on steroids. Everything that’s bad about Article 13 is worse in the Terrorist Content Regulation, even though it’s getting much less attention.

Perhaps because it’s getting so little attention it just sailed through an EU Parliament committee’s approval process. This was in the LIBE Committee, which is supposedly in charge of protecting civil liberties. And yet here, it seems to be stamping them out.

The text, as it was adopted, states that an authority (administrative or judicial) can order any actor of the Internet to remove a content under one hour. This unrealistic obligation will destroy small and medium platforms and, in contrast, reinforce Google and Facebook which are already working together with States to enforce mass and unchecked censorship – this is the very purpose of the Regulation proposed last September by the European Commission.

Once again, the European Parliament has proved that it was unable to resist from the pressure of the European Commission and governments. After the adoption of the Copyright Directive two weeks ago, this vote is a new and even more aggressive step towards mass and automated censorship.

Apparently, the LIBE did strip out some of the other problematic elements of the Regulation — including its attempt to effectively weaponize terms of service to be legally binding on platforms to take down content even if it’s legal. However, it leaves in the 1 hour takedown demand, which is concerning. Also, some in the EU Parliament supposedly plan to offer amendments to add back in the awful stuff that LIBE took out.

The text will now go before the entire EU Parliament, perhaps as early as next week.

La Quadrature du Net has put together a campaign page to help EU citizens contact their MEPs to educate them about what a disaster this regulation will be. Unfortunately, with the issue receiving so little public attention (especially compared to things like the EU Copyright Directive), there’s an unfortunate chance this thing just sails through. It’s the type of thing where politicians who don’t understand the issues at all will see something to stop “terrorist content” and assume “that sounds good.” The fact that the EU Commission and now the Civil Liberties Committee just let this move forward is a travesty. But, as we’ve noted, the EU seems intent on stamping out every nice thing about the internet, so it’ll just throw this one on the pile.

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Google Releases February Android Security Update for Pixel Devices, Moves About Phone Section to Primary Settings – Gadgets 360

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  1. Google Releases February Android Security Update for Pixel Devices, Moves About Phone Section to Primary Settings  Gadgets 360
  2. February 2019 Android Security Update Goes Live for Pixel Devices  Droid Life
  3. February security patch rolling out to Google Pixel, factory images and OTAs live  9to5Google
  4. February 2019 security patches are out for the Google Pixel and Essential Phone  XDA Developers
  5. Google begins rolling out February Android security patch to Pixel devices  Neowin
  6. View full coverage on read more

“android security news” – read more

Australian Parliament Moves Copyright Amendment Out Of Committee and Into Law

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As we have been discussing over the past few months, Australia has been considering updating its copyright law from one which does site-blocking with judicial oversight to one which does site-blocking, mirror-blocking without judicial oversight, search results blocking, and expands the definition of the types of sites to be blocked from those with the primary “purpose” of infringement to those with the primary “effect” being infringement. These changes came with concerns in tow, both from government officials and tech companies, and it’s understandable why. Any time the government looks to lessen its own oversight in the interest of making it easier for corporate interests to censor the internet for the common citizen, it creates a situation practically begging for abuse with the principal effect being dampening the primary purpose of the internet as a communications tool. The concerns raised over this change in the law focused on those very things, while also highlighting how the copyright industries have been touting the site-blocking already in place as a success.

But, as is too often the case, the Australian government has hand-waved those concerns with claims that nebulous “safeguards” are in place to prevent abuse and recommended going ahead with the changes to the law.

Yesterday, the Senate’s Environment and Communications Legislation Committee published the results of its inquiry. Those hoping for an additional dissenting voice will be disappointed.

“The committee is of the view that the amendments proposed by the bill are likely to improve the operation of the injunctive scheme in section 115A of the Copyright Act, and represent a measured and proportionate response to concerns identified by stakeholders in relation to the operation of that scheme,” the report reads. “In this respect, the committee also notes that the majority of submissions received by the committee supported the bill and recommended that it be passed unamended.”

After noting that the expansion for blocking mirror sites without judicial approval could be abused, the committee goes on to say it’s all under control.

“[T]he committee is of the view that the measures are appropriately circumscribed. In particular, the committee notes the evidence that the Court would maintain ultimate oversight over these injunctions, as well as the evidence that there must a sufficient nexus between the online location covered by the original injunction and the location to which the order is expanded,” the report reads.

In other words, way back in the distance, the courts are ultimately still in charge of the injunctions, somehow making the fact that the expanded injunctions are approved outside of the court all good. And, on top of that, none of this will be abused because rightsholders will have to rely on good evidence for the expanded injunctions, despite the fact that rightsholders’ grasp on what good evidence is has always been laughable. Again, all of this is pitched as a way to get site-blocking in place more speedily, which sets off all the obvious justice alarm bells.

On the search-blocking portion of the amendment, the committee relies on a claim that, essentially, Google is helping people infringe copyright.

Finally, on forcing search engines to purge their results of previously-blocked sites, the Committee again acknowledges objections from those who feel such measures are unnecessary. Again, however, the report dismisses the concerns, noting that search engines may play a role in both infringement and enforcement of copyright so the measures are “appropriate.”

Except that this is nonsense industry drivel, and always has been. Search engines don’t play “a role” in infringement. They play a role in returning relevant search results to the public. They’re address books, of a kind, and search engines no more play a role in infringing copyright by returning search results than address books play a role in drug use by listing where a flop house might be. If that is what the committee is relying on to approve a copyright amendment with valid opposition and concern, it sure doesn’t make one confident in the rest of its assessment.

It was on the back of these nebulous claims of safeguards and shaky claims about how search engines work that the amendment was moved out of committee and quickly passed by the Australian Parliament. And it was announced in a manner that appears designed to irritate those of us who actually know what copyright infringement is and is not.

Announcing the adoption of the amendments by Parliament today, the Government said that the Bill will give rightsholders enhanced ability to fight copyright infringement. Minister for Communications and the Arts Mitch Fifield noted that there will now be “less room” for pirates to circumvent Australia’s existing measures.

“The Government has zero tolerance for online piracy. It is theft, and damaging to our creative economy and local creators. We are committed to protecting Australia’s creative industries and the world-class content we produce every year,” Minister Fifield said. “The passage of our legislation today sends a strong message to online pirates that Australia does not tolerate online theft.”

I actually wouldn’t have thought it possible to include the “copyright is theft” fallacy not once, but twice, in a three sentence statement on passing a bill that does nothing to stop theft, but will almost certainly be an avenue for abuse by copyright industry groups that have always been willing to slam open a door after its been cracked an inch. The only silver lining in all of this is the amendment comes with a two year review period, after which the government will have the opportunity to make further changes if such abuses occur.

And they almost certainly will occur, though I would expect the government to perform its same hand-waving trick when those concerns arise two years from now as well.

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Tim Berners-Lee Moves Forward With His Big Plan To Fix The Web By Bringing Back Its Original Decentralized Promise

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Here we go. For years I’ve been talking about how we really need to move the web to a world of protocols instead of platforms. The key concept is that so much of the web has been taken over by internet giants who have built data silos. There are all sorts of problems with this. For one, when those platforms are where the majority of people get their information, it makes them into the arbiters of truth when that should make us quite uncomfortable. Second, it creates a privacy nightmare where hugely valuable data stores are single points of failure for all your data (even when those platforms have strong security, just having so much data held by one source is dangerous). Finally, it really takes us far, far away from the true promise of cloud computing, which was supposed to be a situation where we separated out the data and the application layers and could point multiple applications at the same data. Instead, we got silos where you’re relying on a single provider to host both the data and the application (which also raises privacy concerns).

Despite some people raising these issues for quite some time, there hasn’t been much public discussion of them until just recently (in large part, I believe, driven by the growing worries about how the big platforms have become so powerful). A few companies here or there have been trying to move us towards a world of protocols instead of platforms, and one key project to watch is coming from the inventor of the web himself, Tim Berners-Lee. He had announced his project Solid a while back: an attempt to separate out the data layer, allowing end users to control that data and have much more control over what applications could access it. I’ve been excited about the project, but just last week I commented to someone that it wasn’t clear how much progress had actually been made.

Then, last Friday, Berners-Lee announced that he’s doubling down on the project, to the point that he’s taken a sabbatical from MIT and reduced his involvement with the W3C to focus on a new company to be built around Solid called inrupt. inrupt’s new CEO also has a blog post about this, which admittedly comes off as a bit odd. It seems to suggest that the reason to form inrupt was not necessarily that Solid has made a lot of forward progress, but rather than it needs money, and the only way to get some is to set up a company:

Solid as an open-source project had been facing the normal challenges: vying for attention and lacking the necessary resources to realize its true potential. The solution was to establish a company that could bring resources, process and appropriate skills to make the promise of Solid a reality. There are plenty of examples of a commercial entity serving as the catalyst for an open-source project, to bolster the community with the energy and infrastructure of a commercial venture.

And so we started planning inrupt – a company to do just that. Inrupt’s mission is to ensure that Solid becomes widely adopted by developers, businesses, and eventually … everyone; that it becomes part of the fabric of the web. Tim, as our CTO, has committed his time and talent to the company, and I am delighted to be its chief executive. We also have an exceptional investor as part of the team.

I’m certainly hopeful that something significant comes of this, as it truly is an opportunity to move the internet into that kind of more distributed, less centralized/silo’d world that shows off the true power of the web. I have heard some grousing among some people that this is just Tim Berners-Lee just rebranding the concept of the Semantic Web that he started pushing nearly two decades ago, without any real traction. And, of course, there have been plenty of other attempts over the decades to build these kinds of systems. As it stands right now, there are a few other projects that are getting some traction, including the more distributed social platform Mastodon or some of the ideas that have come out of IndieWeb.

That said, we may finally be entering an era where both users and companies alike are recognizing the benefits of a more distributed web and the downsides of a more centralized one. So it really does feel like there’s an opportunity to embrace these concepts, and it’s good to see the founder of the world wide web ramping up his efforts on this. If it produces real, workable solutions, that would obviously be fantastic, but at the very least if it gets more people just thinking about these concepts, that would also be useful. So, this should be seen as big news for anyone concerned about the powers of the largest internet companies (especially if you’re skeptical about government trying to step in to deal with those companies when they don’t know what they’re doing). While the details and implementation will matter quite a bit, it’s exciting to see more movement towards a world in which the data layer is not just separated out, but where end users will be able to fully control that layer themselves, and potentially choose which apps can access what (and for how long). It certainly opens up a real opportunity to bring back the early promise of a truly decentralized web… and that would be a web built on protocols rather than centralized, silo’d platforms.

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