Unfortunately, knowing that our other two projects, like a jealous spouse, just won’t leave us time to start (regularly) posting again, we let eZee rest.

Although we have not had much time to actually update the site, we still try to keep up with the dirty world of corporate greed and tech news on various sites like TechDirt, TF, TC etc and…Ars Technica. Even, once in a while, succumbing to the temptation of sharing our two bits via comments, when and if, we get the time.

Ars is definitely one of our favorite tech sites, and as any regular to eZee might have noticed in the past: we refer, and link to a whole bunch of their articles, especially articles from Nate Anderson who knows what he is talking about and who writes interesting articles from the world of copyright / corporate greed.

While there have been accusations about Ars’ slanted coverage towards Apple Computers for years, we really had no idea how deep the truth was buried till we broke the unwritten rule:

“Thou shall not insult Apple in a catchy way.”

But let’s go back a bit  and look at Ars’ past articles about Apple, every product and rumor gets an article (or a few articles just to be sure).
If a new picture of a soon-to-be-released-apple-product is released with a button, switch, scratch or reflection not previously seen in other pictures… that gets an article as well.

It’s not uncommon to see 3-5 (or more) articles on an Apple product splashed on Ars front page,  per day, just before a new Apple product hits the shelves. One could almost jump to the conclusion that the point of so many articles on the same company was just to keep said company in the readers mind. Not that we would ever jump to such a conclusion based on just a few hundred Ars’ posts…

While most advertising agencies like to have you splash their product’s picture on your front page, they absolutely love you, and drool all over you, if you could write up an entire post and pass it as an article of said product. Not related to this post in anyway of course… but here’s an example of a dodgy “article”. (Kinda NSFW)

I mean let’s have a look at one example article here:
Apple already working on the next version of their operating system

Yes, it boggles the mind that a software company would be working on the next version of their successful operating system, that is seriously big news, almost as big news as the sun is going to rise tomorrow.

What would we ever do if Ars didn’t inform us that Apple was working on the next version of OS X in a proper half page article, who would have thunk it?

Microsoft or Linux working on their next version does not get their own article page, but that’s kind of to be expected right? After all, software makers, well… keep making software.
Nothing to see here, move along now.

It really is a shame how Apple, run by their great megalomaniac leader, who probably read “Mein Kampf” a few dozen times back to back for tips and tricks has made a great site like Ars (or their parent company Conde Nast) their bitch.

How do we know this?  By breaking the unwritten rule “Thou shall not insult Apple in a catchy way“ which we discovered when we wrote “crApple” instead of “Apple” a couple of times in the comments – which promptly got us a stern warning from one of the mods, and then banned. Probably didn’t like reading our comments on his iPhone or iPad or iMac or other iShit.

Apparently typing “crap”,”sh*t”, “f*ck”, “fu*king”, “bas*ard”, “ba*tards”,”pimp”,”whore” and even “c*nt” (without the censoring we used here)to name but a few words is not enough to get your ass  banned  on Ars (view their comments archive under any controversial topic), the above words might be good for a warning but not banning. Heck! You can even insult the article author by calling him misinformed,uninformed or point out grammatical errors and accuse him of not doing his research properly and get away with it…
but mention “crApple” – and the sh*t really hits the fan!

Don’t believe us? But don’t want to risk your Ars account?
Well, simply Google “online proxy”, create another account on Ars via a proxy, then post a comment with the word crApple and see if your ass is not banned quicker than you can stop laughing at iPadForAniC*nt.com (a site we discovered via the comments on Ars).

Being great admirers of sites like iPadForAniC*nt.com we immediately tried to see if crApple.com was available to create a parody site, anything that gets such an immediate reaction from fanbois must be worth something… sadly, someone else had the foresight to buy it, even though its not used in any meaningful way.

As for us, we probably will honor the ban, as regular users of eZee know, being members of the Pirate Party of Sweden, we don’t take too kindly to censorship and like to speak our mind.
We don’t think Ars will miss us either – we always used flashblock and AdBlockPlus when visiting Ars.

Kindly forgive us but we have to stop posting updates for a while or post sporadically because we are working on 2 exciting new projects to make P2P better – thus we just don’t have time to update the site and code for the new projects.

Once both these projects are done, the site will resume its normal activities.

We wish we could disclose more about the projects but we promised we wouldn’t, the best we can do is to tell you that its going to effect the music industry much more than the movie industry.. and not in a way that they are going to like!

With constant copyright extensions,  draconian laws (like IPRED, 3 strikes etc including proposed changes like the Digital Economy Bill and ACTA) and DRM the industry has pushed and pushed and pushed citizens like you and me, its time we think to take a more active role in the evolution of P2P and push back rather than just reporting on the news or one battle lost or won.

We hope you will wish us luck..

Your friends at eZee.se

The story:

Tim Bray Throws His Hat Into The Android Ring Because He Hates The iPhone

As Apple goes on the offensive against Android, it risks alienating more and more developers. Today, another prominent developer chose the opposing side. Tim Bray, the well-known software architect and blogger, is joining Google to help rally even more developers around the Android mobile operating system.

Bray is the co-inventor of the XML Web standard, and most recently worked at Sun Microsystems. In a blog post, he explains that he is drawn to Google in part because he hates the iPhone, or at least its closed and controlling environment from a developer’s perspective.

The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet’s future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It’s a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord’s pleasure and fear his anger.

I hate it.

He also notes that Android is catching up to the iPhone in terms of sales:

As of now, they’re selling around 90K iPhones per day compared to around 60K Android handsets. It’s a horse race!

In February, Google noted partners are selling 60,000 Android handsets a day, and Apple sold 8.7 million iPhones last quarter, or about 97,000 a day. Android is making steady gains in market share.

Bray’s decision to..

Read the rest of the article, related links as well as great commentary on TechCrunch.

Ask the BPI, they have some experience in that department…

From Boing Boing:

Leaked UK record industry memo sets out plans for breaking copyright

Cory Doctorow at 11:11 PM March 12, 2010

In this leaked, six-page email, Richard Mollet, the Director of Public Affairs for the British Phonographic Institute (the UK’s record-industry lobbyists), sets out the BPI’s strategy for ramming through the Digital Economy Bill, a sweeping, backwards reform to UK copyright law that will further sacrifice privacy and due process in the name of preserving copyright, without actually preserving copyright.

Mollet’s memo, entitled “Digital Economy Bill weekly update 11 March 2010,” appears to be a weekly status report on the DEB’s progress. On the CC list are executives from major record labels, staff at IFPI (the international record industry lobby), PR agents from The Open Road, and others I don’t recognise (if you can identify others on the CC list, please post to the comments).

In the memo, Mollet identifies Britain’s top spies as being a stumbling block to the bill’s passage — worried, apparently, that creating a Great Firewall of Britain will make it harder for spies to spy on naughty sites (someone should tell MI5 about Ipredator, the excellent proxy service from the Pirate Bay; after all, that’s the same proxy that everyone else in Britain is likely to use to get at the blocked sites if the BPI gets its way).

Mollet also implies that Britain’s spy agencies might have paid for a Talk Talk survey in which 71% of 18-34 year olds said that they would simply evade the DEB and go on infringing.

Mollet claims that Britain’s ISPs have..

Read the rest at BoingBoing.

Related article form TD

BPI Says That UK Spies Are Against Digital Economy Bill

The debate over the Digital Economy Bill in the UK (the attempt to ratchet up copyright law to repay favors to an entertainment industry that is slow to adapt) has taken an odd twist. Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing has the details of a leaked memo from the BPI (pdf) to a bunch of recording industry execs and lobbyists, that details the state of the bill and the ongoing strategy for getting it approved. There are a few items worth noting:

1. The BPI seems to think that the UK intelligence community is now the biggest threat to stopping the bill. Seriously. Apparently, UK spies are afraid that passing this bill will drive a very large number of people to switch to using encrypted internet tools, making it that much more difficult to spy on them. This may be an accurate concern, but it’s surprising to hear that the intelligence community is now considered the biggest hurdle to getting the bill passed. Apparently, the BPI is fairly unconcerned with consumer rights groups. The BPI seems so paranoid about the intelligence community, that it actually suggests in the memo that the British spying agency MI5 may have paid for a recent survey released by the ISP Talk Talk, saying that 71% of those 18-34 years old would continue to file share, using “undetectable means.”

The memo also mocks the fact that this particular bill now has the Open Rights Group on the same side of an issue as MI5 — when the two are normally somewhat diametrically opposed.

2. While the BPI sounds fairly confident that the bill will get through, it recognizes that it could get stalled if enough Members of Parliament start asking questions about the speed with which the bill is being pushed through:

As for the House of Commons — which will be sent the Bill next week — there is a strange sense of detachment. MPs with whom we spoke back in Autum are already resigned to the fact that they will have minimum input into the provisions from this point on, given the lack of time for detailed scrutiny. One leading backbencher has told us that there is “little point in meeting, since the Bill will be determined at wash-up”. That said, John Whittingdale — an inveterate “timing sceptic” (i.e. he’s for the Bill but doesn’t think it will get through in time) has said this week that he still thinks it could be lost if enough MPs protest at not having the opportunity to scrutinise it. Whilst true in constitutional theory terms, the hard politics of the situation makes it seem unlikely. And inveterate opponents like Derek Wyatt and Tom Watson continue to blog and tweet with critical comments, but there is not the sense of a groundswell of massive opposition to the Bill.

In other words: if you live in the UK, now is the time to start speaking up and contacting your elected officials, as well as letting others know that a bill to greatly take away your rights is about to be pushed through the House of Commons, unless you speak up now.

3. Finally, among the “upcoming” activities, the memo mentions that on Wednesday the 18th, there will be a release of a report from TERA on “The importance of saving jobs in the EU’s Creative Industries.” We see

Read the rest of the article on TechDirt.

Related document: here (PDF).

Court Acquits BitTorrent User Citing Faulty Evidence

The Lithuanian anti-piracy outfit LANVA has lost its case against a user of the prominent BitTorrent tracker LinkoManija.net. After being accused of sharing Windows 7 Ultimate, the defendant walked free when the court decided that uTorrent is not a certified evidence gathering tool.

Last year LANVA reported the IP-addresses of 106 users of the country’s largest BitTorrent site to the police. The anti-piracy group claimed that the site’s users were sharing a copy of the Windows 7 Ultimate operating system and took action on behalf of Microsoft without notifying the software company.

The self-proclaimed investigators evidence consisted of a screenshot of peers as listed by uTorrent. The evidence was gathered in conjunction with a local police officer, but none of the parties involved was authorized to conduct an investigation of this kind.

LANVA nevertheless took one of the 106 users to court, hoping to set a favorable precedent that would allow them to go after other alleged copyright infringers. The case went before the courts and the verdict handed down today was not the one the anti-piracy outfit had hoped for.

Citing faulty evidence, the District Court judge closed the case and fully acquitted the sole defendant Sergej Bernotas. The judge stated that LANVA had no right to collect and use the information they gathered. In addition, the judge ruled that such evidence gathering techniques have to be approved before they can be used.
Sergej Bernotas Came Out As a Winner

lanva

For now, uTorrent and for that matter all other BitTorrent clients remain uncertified as proper evidence collection tools. To be used as such, the developers would also have to give their approval, something that obviously didn’t happen in this case.

At the court hearing it also became clear that the police officer involved had no IT experience and simply carried out what LANVA told him to. When the policeman was asked what tools he used to gather evidence he replied “a computer” resulting in laughs from the audience.

Aside from the…

Read the rest of the article on TF.

When independent filmmaker David Hoffman set out to make a documentary on the Sputnik hysteria  that swept the US in the 1950s, he styled the piece as an hour-and-a-half feature film. He relied heavily on old news clips from the time, none of which were provided by the networks themselves (most didn’t even know what they had). Hoffman spent months tracking down bits of footage from collectors on eBay and from uploaders on YouTube. Whenever he made contact with someone who had posted one clip, Hoffman asked them what else they had.

When he was done, he took all this material back to the networks—who promptly billed him the per-minute feature film rate for reusing their copyrighted material. The fact that Hoffman was making an independently financed documentary and not a traditional feature film was irrelevant, and the total bill for clearing rights came to $320,000.

In the press package accompanying the film’s release in 2008, Hoffman discussed his “new documentary style” that “embraces the timeless feel of black-and-white footage while staying true to the soundtrack of that era”—few talking heads here, just lots of original footage.

But Hoffman felt like the rightsholders charged outrageous amounts of money for their old news clips, especially after he had located them all. “The real challenge however was diligently tracking the footage from middle European and Russian underground sources,” he wrote. “Once that was underway, we then had to secure the rights by contacting quite a few people—eventually paying through the nose!”

The money came from Hoffman’s investor, a person who put up the entire $650,000 needed to produce the project. The film, called Sputnik Mania, opened at the IFC Film Center in New York on March 14, 2008 and was eventually shown on a few more screens around the country, but Hoffman admits that he “lost my shirt” on the project.

In the end, the film was picked up by The History Channel for $200,000—less than Hoffman had paid just to secure the rights to his footage.

Speaking at the OnCopyright 2010 conference in New York last week, Hoffman used the story of Sputnik Mania to illustrate the ways that lengthy copyright terms and high prices combine to make America’s cultural history difficult to access without serious cash. Hoffman has made documentaries for 40 years, and he’s quite willing to pay for footage, but his decision to make Sputnik Mania as a feature film hit him with more expensive per-minute fees, and negotiations were not an option.

“It is largely impossible to deal with the systems unless the systems open up to the independent filmmaker,” he concluded.

Hoffman’s not currently making films. At the moment, he’s on YouTube, drumming up niche audiences and doing consulting for companies like Verizon and GE.
A difficult problem
David Hoffman

Issues surrounding copyright, fair use, licensing fees, and documentaries have been big news in documentary circles for at least a decade now. Documentaries often don’t have buckets of cash to license perpetual rights, rights which grow ever-more expensive, and the result can be situations like the famous PBS series Eyes on the Prize. The civil rights documentary series was made on the cheap and it aired in 1987, but ten years later was unavailable in any form; the original footage and music had been licensed on five-year basis and the filmmakers could not afford to renew the rights. (The series may finally be available to consumers on DVD this year after the filmmakers encouraged and then discouraged BitTorrent use, finally opting instead to raise more money to relicense all the clips.)

In January, Law professor Lawrence Lessig penned a lengthy essay on documentaries and licensing for The New Republic. How did he want to deal with this issue and related issues involving copyright, fair use, and licensing?

“I have no clear view,” he concluded. “I only know that the two extremes that are before us would, each of them, if operating alone, be awful for our culture. The one extreme, pushed by copyright abolitionists, that forces free access on every form of culture, would shrink the range and the diversity of culture. I am against abolitionism. And I see no reason to support the other extreme either—pushed by the content industry—that seeks to license every single use of culture, in whatever context. That extreme would radically shrink access to our past.

“Instead we need an approach that recognizes the errors in both extremes, and that crafts the balance that any culture needs: incentives to support a diverse range of creativity, with an assurance that the creativity inspired remains for generations to access and understand. This may be too much to ask.”

Part of the issue here is that many such uses of old clips in documentaries might turn out to be fair use—but defining fair use remains…

Read the rest of the article and commentary on Ars

File-Sharing and Link Sites Declared Legal in Spain

After early calls to shut down a Spanish file-sharing site were dismissed, music group SGAE pinned its hopes on success at the full trial. But, the outcome for them was nothing short of a disaster. The judge declared that both non-commercial file-sharing link sites and non-profit use of P2P networks are legal in Spain.

Despite many rulings which have declared file-sharing sites legal if they don’t profit directly from copyright infringements, in recent years its become something of a custom in Spain for music rights groups to attempt to close down sites in advance of a full hearing to assess their legality.

One such case involves eDonkey link site elrincondejesus.com and although fairly low profile worldwide, the site will now start to set headlines.

Back in May last year, site and bar owner Jesus Guerra received a complaint from music group SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores) which alleged the site abused the copyrights of its members.

In a June court appearance, SGAE hoped to get an early injunction to shut Elrincondejesus immediately in advance of a full hearing which would happen at a later date. Guerra protested that his site is legal, carries no advertising and simply provides links like any other search engine.

Judge Raul N. García Orejudo threw out the request for an immediate closure of the site in July, declaring: “P2P networks, as a mere transmission of data between Internet users, do not violate, in principle, any right protected by Intellectual Property Law.”

Now the full case has been heard and the outcome is nothing short of a disaster for SGAE.

In order to assess if there had been a breach of Spain’s Intellectual Property Act, the court had to decide if simply providing links to copyrighted works was the same as making those works available to the public. Judge Raul N. García Orejudo decided that offering an index of links and/or linking to copyright material is not the same as distribution and noted that under current law there is nothing which prohibits such sites from operating.

In making his decision the judge also looked at the finances of the site. He said the site was not a business since the operator of Elrincondejesus made no direct or indirect profits from its operation. Apparently on a roll after confirming non-profit file-sharing sites are legal, he gave users of those sites a nice surprise too.

“P2P networks are mere conduits for the transmission of data between Internet users, and on this basis they do not infringe rights protected by

Read the rest of the article at TF

Related article at TD:

Judge Rules P2P Legal In Spain Yet Again

Spain continues to be one of the few countries out there that seems to not have its judges lose their critical thinking abilities the second anyone mentions the word “piracy.” We’ve pointed out a few times in the past that Spanish courts have ruled that file sharing is legal and it looks like they’ve done so again. Infophage was the first of a few to send in an article about the latest ruling, which again found that just linking to infringing material is not copyright infringement. The judge apparently went further, though, also noting that using P2P file sharing systems does not appear to violate copyright law in Spain, as long as the user isn’t doing so for monetary profit.

Of course, this isn’t over by a long shot. Late last year, entertainment industry lobbyists got Spanish politicians to propose new copyright laws that would (of course) ratchet up copyright to make it more like it is in other countries (i.e., more draconian). And, as we recently noted, a bunch of Spanish record labels have sued the gov’t for not doing enough to stop file sharing. But, hopefully, this country that has…

Read the rest of the article at TechDirt

Related article via Google Translate: here

And from SlashDot

“As a follow-up to a previous discussion a judge in Spain has ruled that under Spanish law a person who downloads music for personal use can not be punished or branded a criminal. This seems to be a teeny bit clearer than the first article, which points out that downloading is a civil, and not criminal, offense for individuals. The Spanish recording industry federation Promusicae is predictably a bit peeved, and says it will appeal against the decision.” From the article: “The state prosecutor’s office and two music distribution associations had sought a two year sentence against the man, who downloaded songs and then allegedly offered them on a CD through email and chat rooms. However, there was no direct proof he made money from selling the CDs. Justice Minister Juan Fernando Lopéz Aguilar says Spain is drafting a new law to abolish the existing right to private copies of material. Due to different regulatory regimes in Europe, the proceedings against file sharers differ greatly in each country. However, most European judges tend to take a harder stance on file sharing. Twenty two people in Finland were fined..

Read the rest of the article at SlashDot.

From BarcelonaReporter

P2P File-Sharing legal in Spain

The subject of the lawsuit isn’t particularly important in the grand scheme of things, A fairly small eDonkey and BitTorrent link site called elrincondejesus.com
P2P File-Sharing legal in Spain

Spain is becoming the last bastion of common sense when it comes to peer-to-peer and file sharing, at least until the big media companies get their own way and change the law in the country altogether. Torrentfreak, the ever-vigilant blog focusing on BitTorrent and file-sharing issues, points to a recent lawsuit in Spain that ended quite favorably for both P2P users and link sites and dedicated search engines, and that found both use-cases to be perfectly legal in the country.

The subject of the lawsuit isn’t particularly important in the grand scheme of things. A fairly small eDonkey and BitTorrent link site called elrincondejesus.com was sued almost a year ago by a local music industry group, SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores), for alleged copyright infringement on the site. The group initially tried to…

Read the rest of the article at BR.

.

We have been left with no other choice other than to group a couple of their articles in single posts here.

Starting with a “what’s good for the goose ISN’T good for the gander”:

Newspapers Gaming Google With Questionable Tactics

There was some hubbub earlier this month when sex columnist Violet Blue discovered that one of her old columns for the SF Chronicle had been altered by the Chronicle’s online site, SFGate.com. She was upset that the changes implied the article said the opposite of what it actually said — and found it odd that, beyond that, all the links and comments were missing, and the story was now spread out over several pages. This resulted in some investigations, with venture capitalist Tim Oren pointing out that this appeared to be the work of a company called Perfect Market, a well-funded startup (funded, in part, by the Tribune Company), who had partnered with various newspaper sites to game Google’s search results. As Oren notes:

The keyword and ad-stuffed dead end pages apparently produced by Perfect Markets’s technology are isomorphic, from a search company’s point of view, to those created by more questionable tactics such as scraping. The intent is the same: to spam the index. This is the behavior that routinely gets questionable sites shoved to Google’s back pages, or banished altogether. One has to wonder just how long this type of abuse will be tolerated, simply because it’s being practiced by a recognized media outlet.

GigaOm also picked up on this story and in the comments to that article Ben Metcalfe did some sleuthing and revealed a bunch of newspapers all using this same highly questionable tactic.

Now, there are a few ironies here. First, with so many newspaper people (misleadingly) claiming that Google “steals” from them with Google News, to then find out that many of those same newspaper are trying to game Google with highly questionable tactics — basically proves that the newspapers are lying. They clearly want more Google traffic, and they’re willing to go to ridiculous lengths to get it.

Second, for all the talk of how no one can do investigative reporting without newspapers being around, it’s fascinating to see this story broken open by some bloggers and commenters — rather than any newspaper. That says something, doesn’t it?

In the meantime, it appears that Perfect Market is going into damage control mode, contacting GigaOm, and trying to spin the whole thing, by insisting that it’s really just trying to “delight our customers and users with innovative new content experiences.” The company also claims that it’s not “spamming” search engines but that it provides “contextual navigation to relevant related content and topics so the user can browse the publishers vast content library rather than creating dead ends.” Except, in this case, the “innovative new content experience” actually did lead to a “dead end,” rather than pointing to the…

Rest of the article, great links plus commentary: here

Another Newspaper related article:

UK Commission Suggests Taxing Google To Prop Up Newspapers

Earlier this year, we noted that France was considering a plan to tax Google to pay record labels. It looks like the UK has come up with a similarly bad plan for the newspaper industry, with a commission suggesting a tax on Google and other news aggregators, to help prop up newspapers. There doesn’t seem to be much greater rationale, other than that old news publications are struggling and Google seems to be doing great, so why not tax them? The argument, of course, makes little sense. It’s basically…

Rest of the article and links: Here.

Brazil Moves Forward With Plan To Ignore US Patents And Copyrights After US Refuses To Abide By WTO Ruling

Two years ago, we noted that Brazil had asked the WTO for permission to ignore certain US patents and copyrights as a retaliation against the US’s refusal to abide by a WTO ruling. This is, of course, typical of the US. When the WTO sides with the US on certain issues, you see the US and industry lobbyists go nuts about how those countries need to capitulate due to “international obligations.” But when the WTO rules against the US, the USTR has a long history of ignoring the ruling or even pretending (falsely) that it “won.” Given that most countries can’t do much if the US just ignores the WTO, there’s been a new push to allow countries to ignore US copyrights and patents up to a certain dollar amount. In Antigua, for example, the WTO said it could ignore up to $21 million worth of US IP.

Brazil is now moving forward with a plan to actually ignore US patents and copyrights. It’s putting forth a retaliation plan to the WTO that includes various tariffs and other sanctions — but most interestingly, a plan to ignore $238 million annually in US copyrights and patents — expected to cover both pharmaceutical patents and…

Rest of the article plus links and commentary: here

And speaking of news mediums:

Venezuela Next Up To Try To Censor The Internet

Having just criminalized  video games the government doesn’t like, it looks like Hugo Chavez is looking to have Venezuela be the next country to massively censor the internet.

“The Internet cannot be something open where anything is said and done. No, every country has to apply its own rules and norms,”

Of course, it seems that the “rules and norms” that Chavez wants are “no criticizing me.”

“We have to act. We are going to ask the attorney general for help, because this is a crime. I have information that this page periodically publishes stories calling for a coup d’etat. That cannot be permitted,”

Notice the problem here. Chavez’s real complaint is with an organization calling for a coup — but his response is to suggest that…

Read the rest of the article here

Related story from  Crikey

Study finds 55 percent of newspaper stories are placed

Today Crikey launches an investigation six months in the making. Spinning the Media is an investigation in conjunction with the University of Technology (UTS) Sydney into the role PR plays in making the media.

Under UTS’ Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) head Wendy Bacon (a Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist herself…) more than 40 students have got up close and personal with the sticky end of the spin cycle. They’ve had to analyse, critique, question and then pick up the phone to ask the hard questions of the media and its reliance on public relations to drive news.

Hard questions, because this is what came out in the wash: after analysing a five-day working week in the media, across 10 hard-copy papers, ACIJ and Crikey found that nearly 55% of stories analysed were driven by some form of public relations. The Daily Telegraph came out on top of the league ladder with 70% of stories analysed triggered by public relations. The Sydney Morning Herald gets the wooden spoon with (only) 42% PR-driven stories for that week.

Many journalists and editors were defensive when the phone call came. Who’d blame them? They’re busier than ever, under resourced, on deadline and under pressure. Most refused to respond, others who initially granted an interview then asked for their comments to be withdrawn out of fear they’d be…

From Ars

Europe trashes ACTA as Obama praises it

Earlier this week, we noted that the major parties in the European Parliament had all agreed on a resolution trashing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the secret process that has been hashing it out. That resolution has passed Parliament by a huge margin—633 yes votes, 13 no votes, and 16 abstentions.

The Greens/EFA coalition praised the vote. Greens MEP Carl Schlyter of Sweden said that “ACTA risks becoming known as the Absence of Commission Transparency Agreement… The EU cannot continue to negotiate on ACTA if the people are not allowed to take part in the process. It is also a totally absurd and unacceptable situation if MEPs, behind closed doors, have to ask the Commission about the content of the agreements we are supposed to vote on.”
A happy Engström

Christian Engström, the lone Pirate Party rep in Parliament, summed up the vote as an “epic win” that showed “the European Parliament is not a doormat.”

The resolution demanded complete access to the ACTA negotiating texts, and it threatens a lawsuit if the European Commission fails to turn them over. Parliament was particularly miffed that the process has taken place in such secrecy, when major international IP treaties have in fact been negotiated much more openly at venues like WIPO and the WTO.

The resolution doesn’t call for an end to ACTA, but instead a limit to the core principles of counterfeiting and piracy—broad new enforcement measures like Internet disconnection should not be a part of it.

The Commission speaks

The EU Commissioner for Trade, Karel de Gucht, tried to head off the vote this week by telling Parliament that he heard their concerns.

“The Commission is in favour of releasing the negotiating documents as soon as possible,” he said. “However, a few ACTA negotiating parties remain opposed to an early release. I strongly disagree with their approach, but I can not unilaterally breach a confidentiality commitment. My credibility as a negotiator is at stake. Nevertheless, I will see to it that at the next negotiating round, in April, the Commission will vigorously push its negotiating partners to agree to release the text and I will raise European Parliament concerns bilaterally with ACTA parties like the US I am scheduled to meet before then.”

He also offered more detailed briefings with any MEP who wants one, and he pledged that “three strikes” would stay out of the deal. “I am aware of the concerns expressed by some of you about the introduction of a compulsory ‘three strikes rule’ or a ‘graduated response’ system to fight copyright infringements and Internet piracy,” he said. “Let me be very clear on this, so there is no room for ambiguity… The EU does not support and will not accept that ACTA creates an obligation to disconnect people from the internet because of illegal downloads.”

As we have reported, the current (leaked) ACTA draft would require that ISPs have some policy in place to “address the unauthorized storage or transmission of materials protected by copyright.” A footnote provides a single example of such a policy: “providing for termination in appropriate circumstances of subscriptions and accounts in the service provider’s system or network of repeat infringers.”

Internet disconnection isn’t mandatory, but it is currently encouraged by ACTA.

Obama on ACTA

As Europe’s politicians were calling for transparency and limitations, President Obama went to the US Export-Import Bank and made a speech in which he praised ACTA. Yes, it was mentioned only once, but the treaty was picked out by name, and without qualification.

“What’s more, we’re going to..

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From TD:

James Murdoch Is Very, Very Confused About Copyright Infringement (And So Is His Dad, Rupert)

TorrentFreak has an article about how Ari Emanuel, brother of Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and the “inspiration” for Jeremy Piven’s “Ari Gold” character in the show Entourage, is claiming that he’s talking to President Obama about implementing a three strikes law in the US. While I’m sure he’s talking, I’m at least somewhat confident he’s not getting very far. Almost everyone I’ve spoken to on various sides of this debate agree that a blatant three strikes law in the US is unlikely to get very far. Now, something like ACTA might put pressure on ISPs to adopt a three strikes rule, and Emanuel’s buddies in Hollywood still think that they can convince ISPs to voluntarily put in place such rules — but very few people seem to think that a full on three strikes law in the US is in the cards. Hopefully that’s the case.

What may be more interesting, however, is what Rupert Murdoch’s son, James Murdoch was saying at the very same event. He didn’t just echo his father’s blatantly incorrect notions of copyright, he went way beyond them. The younger Murdoch, who apparently is the current heir apparent to the Rupert Murdoch throne at the top of News Corp., made a bunch of statements about copyright infringement that sound like the typical comments of someone who has just entered this debate and has never thought about the actual issues. That is, he trots out the ridiculously wrong line that infringement is the same as “theft”:

“We need enforcement mechanisms and we need governments to play ball… There is no difference with going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag and taking this stuff. It’s a basic condition for investment and economic growth and there should be the same level of property rights whether it’s a house or a movie…. The idea that there’s a new consumer class and you have to be consumer-friendly when they’re stealing stuff. No. There should be the same level of sanctity as there is around property. Content is no different. They’re not crazy kids. No. Punish them.”

Where to begin? First of all, yes, there’s a very big difference between going into a store and stealing Pringles (why Pringles?!?) or a handbag. If you do that, the Pringles or the handbags are now missing, gone, kaput. If you make a copy of a digital file, the original is still there. You’ve just created a new one. And, no, it’s not “a basic condition for investment,” that there needs to be the same property rights in a house or a movie. The two things have never had the same property rights. A house never goes into the public domain after a certain period of time. There is no fair use of a house (though, to be fair, the Murdoch family seems to think that fair use doesn’t exist either, despite relying on it heavily in some of their companies). And there’s a reason that there are those significant differences, and it has to do with basic, fundamental economics, and the difference between scarcity and abundance.

Honestly, seeing James Murdoch’s words immediately call to mind Larry Lessig’s recent talk where he discusses how the current media bosses at companies like Viacom are dinosaurs, with the younger generation waiting in the wings to take over, claiming that they don’t hold these same draconian notions on copyright. Except, in this case, James is the younger generation which is supposed to get this stuff.

Perhaps he should take some notes from his (slightly older) sister Elisabeth, who recently made comments that appear to be the exact opposite of what her brother and father are saying:

“Fans remain the best salesmen of our content, even if that behavior is on the borderline of piracy. Danger of the new world is that we must concede that we’ll lose some control.”

I wonder if James’ “the idea that there’s a new consumer class and you have to be consumer-friendly” line was directed at his big sis. Of course, in that recent NY Mag profile of Rupert, it notes that many people expect Elisabeth to come back into the News Corp. fold at some point (she left to start her own — successful — TV production house). Either way, if..

Read the rest of the article as well as great commentary on TechDirt