CUban v. EFF on YouTube

A good roundup of the etech debate over YouTube's use of the DMCA can be found at NewTeeVee:

Cuban used the the evening to shed some light on his position. He thinks Google should be held liable for copyright infringements because YouTube doesn’t establish commercial relations with its users, in effect allowing them to upload videos with fake accounts and without any verification of their identity. This distinguishes the site, in his eyes, from traditional web hosters, who are protected from the misdeeds of their users through the “safe harbor provisions” of the DMCA. Says Cuban: “If you are a web host it should be natural to know who your customers are.”

Von Lohmann disagreed with the notion that there is a clear line between YouTube-like sites and traditional web hosting businesses. He illustrated his point by bringing up other companies that are also offering their services for free. “What about Hotmail? What about free web hosters? What about Six Apart?” he kept asking. “What about Pando? Should they be held liable too?”

• Posted by John Battelle at 10:01 AM
• Permalink
• Comments (0)

COPA Is Struck Down

Remember when the DOJ went on that enormous fishing exercise under the guise of defending/resurrecting COPA, the Child Online Protection Act? Well, a Ed Felten tell us that the Federal judge just killed the act dead. We hope.

This is the end of a long legal process that started with the passage of COPA in 1999. The ACLU, along with various authors and publishers, immediately filed suit challenging COPA, and Judge Reed struck down the law. The case was appealed up to the Supreme Court, which generally supported Judge Reed’s ruling but remanded the case back to him for further proceedings because enough time had passed that the technological facts might have changed. Judge Reed held another trial last fall, at which I testified. Now he has ruled, again, that COPA is unconstitutional.

• Posted by John Battelle at 1:36 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (4)

Do You Trust The Govt. To Not Abuse Patriot Act? Really?

(image)
I've covered how uncomfortable I am with the Patriot Act since the dawn of this blog in 2003, but this post from Mary really drove it home. It covers a Washington Post story that details how, in just two years, the FBI issued more than 140,000 - yes that's 140 THOUSAND - "national security letters," in essence, requests for detailed information on the Database of Intentions that have no requirement of probable cause or judicial review.

Last Friday the Post ran a story from an anonymous but verified source. Read this story. From it:

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

The piece concludes:

...At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

I completely agree.

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:47 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (9)

Google Takes New Privacy Steps: A Start

But it's not what I'd like to see. From Google's blog post:

When you search on Google, we collect information about your search, such as the query itself, IP addresses and cookie details. Previously, we kept this data for as long as it was useful. Today we're pleased to report a change in our privacy policy: Unless we're legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time. When we implement this policy change in the coming months, we will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google's services and protect them from security and other abuses)—but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users, after 18-24 months.

Why 18 to 24 months? Well, I'd wager because Google is all over personalization and doesn't want to hobble itself. More soon...

• Posted by John Battelle at 3:19 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (7)

Net Neutral? Not Sure

It's a fraught issue, but over at GigaOm there's a primer on current Google positions worth reading....

Update: Google says "we're not changing our view!"

A statement from Google sent to me (along with a Save the Internet post):

"Google's position on net neutrality has not changed one bit. We strongly believe that Congress must take action to ensure a free and open Internet, in the face of a highly concentrated broadband market. Furthermore, Google's position -- which we testified to last year in Congress -- is that broadband network operators should not be permitted to charge any content owner extra fees or extra tolls. We continue to support net neutrality legislation by Senators Dorgan and Snowe, and by Representative Markey, and we remain steadfast members of the coalition supporting net neutrality."

And from Vint Cerf, who I pinged:

"We haven't really changed. We think that consumers should know about any restrictions in their use of broadband services and that [broadband] providers should not discriminate among application service providers."

• Posted by John Battelle at 7:27 PM
• Permalink
• Comments (1)