Left to chance

Geoffrey.landis writes ‘In Britain, libel laws are censoring the ability of journalists to write stories about bogus science. Simon Singh, a Ph.D. physicist and author of several best-selling popular-science books, is currently being sued by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for saying that there is no evidence for claims that visiting a chiropractor has health benefits. A year earlier, writer Ben Goldacre faced a libel suit for an article critical of Matthias Rath, who claimed that vitamin supplements can treat HIV and AIDS in place of conventional drugs like anti-retrovirals. In Britain, libel laws don’t have any presumption of innocence — any statement made is assumed to be false unless you prove it’s true. Journalists are running scared.’

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Geoffrey.landis writes ‘In Britain, libel laws are censoring the ability of journalists to write stories about bogus science. Simon Singh, a Ph.D. physicist and author of several best-selling popular-science books, is currently being sued by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) for saying that there is no evidence for claims that visiting a chiropractor has health benefits. A year earlier, writer Ben Goldacre faced a libel suit for an article critical of Matthias Rath, who claimed that vitamin supplements can treat HIV and AIDS in place of conventional drugs like anti-retrovirals. In Britain, libel laws don’t have any presumption of innocence– any statement made is assumed to be false unless you prove it’s true. Journalist are running scared.’

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• When the Internet helped foster nationwide protests in Iran, EFF published a new international edition of our Surveillance Self-Defense guide, explaining how dissidents could avoid government eavesdropping and censorship.
• Google’s new Book Search service will track everything you read, creating a dossier that’s ripe for abusive government demands. EFF rallied authors, publishers, and users together to insist that Google tell the government: “Come back with a warrant.”
• Did you know that your cell phone tells people where you are? EFF published a paper outlining new risks to your location privacy and advising technologists on how to fix them.
• Advertisers are finding new and sneaky ways to track your every move online and to create profiles of your personal interests. EFF is pushing Congress to stop them.

No other organization does as much to protect your freedom and privacy in the technological world. Please donate now to support EFF!


Original article at EFF.org

stavros-59 writes “Australia’s internet censorship watchdog, ACMA, uses an internet classification system originally intended for children’s PC filters. ACMA has now made what must be the most amazing recent decisions of the whole bizarre censorship debate. The Register today has a story about ACMA’s decision to force Apple to withdraw their ITMS gift feature from Australia on the basis that MA+ (over 15 and maybe sex) rated movies could not be given to children using the gift cards. The films are also banned on the internet but not at local video/DVD stores as detailed in this Whirlpool Forum post. At the same time, the photographic work of Robert Mapplethorpe (not for the fainthearted) has been classified as PG (Parental Guidance) by the Classification Board — which is not part of ACMA, but an agency under the Attorney General’s Department.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes “China’s controversial Green Dam Internet Filter died on new PCs a month ago but it wasn’t until recently that Chinese schools silently removed it. Claims that the software inhibited work in schools was cited as the reason by Reuters. “We will remove all Green Dam software from computers in the school as it has strong conflicts with teaching software we need for normal work,” said one school while another claimed ‘It had seriously influenced our normal work.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the past couple weeks, two major online service providers, Blogger and Flickr, announced improvements to their DMCA takedown policies. EFF had a hand in both: Blogger contacted us to discuss their improvements, and we contacted Flickr to raise some concerns we had. We’re glad to see these improvements, which make the process more transparent for users and minimize the collateral damage to free speech that can sometimes be the result when a copyright owner sends a takedown notice.

Blogger’s improvements came in response to complaints from MP3 bloggers, who sometimes saw entire blog posts disappear thanks to one allegedly infringing link. These bloggers were unable to determine which links in their blog posts drew the takedown notice (many of the links were sent by record labels seeking exposure), and thus unable to edit and restore their posts. Blogger has responded by unveiling a forms-based takedown process that should make it easier for the service to parse what, exactly, in a blog post is allegedly infringing. Also, the move to electronic takedowns will speed up Blogger’s ability to forward notices to Chilling Effects, where users can review them. Most importantly, rather than deleting the entire blog post in response to one link, Blogger now puts the post into “draft” mode, thereby allowing the user to edit out the link and restore the remainder of the post. These are all good steps toward minimizing the “collateral damage” caused by a DMCA takedown notice aimed at links, rather than other original content. (We remain concerned, however, that Blogger still isn’t directly forwarding the takedown notice to the user — it seems odd to force them to rely on Chilling Effects.)

Flickr also introduced a number of improvements to the DMCA takedown process, motivated by the recent controversy surrounding the Obama-Joker image posted by Flickr user Firas Alkhateeb. Most importantly, when a photo is removed, its title, description, comments, tags, and notes will remain available (YouTube could learn from this example!). This is an important improvement that preserves the discussion about the allegedly infringing material, something that a copyright owner is not entitled to censor with a DMCA takedown notice. Flickr will also restore the original image to its original context in response to a DMCA counter-notice, another important improvement. Too often, takedowns are sent for illegitimate censorial reasons, and if the user elects to submit a counter-notice, she should be able to restore the material to its original location, complete with its original context.

Kudos to Blogger and Flickr for taking the concerns of their users seriously, even as they comply with the DMCA takedown notices that they receive from copyright owners. Their actions raise the bar for other service providers, hopefully encouraging users to vote with their feet and abandon services that are sloppy about handling DMCA takedown notices.

Original article at EFF.org