FCC's Net Neutrality Plan Would Permit Blocking of BitTorrent

Remember what put the debate over net neutrality into high gear? In 2007, EFF and the Associated Press confirmed suspicions that Comcast was clandestinely blocking BitTorrent traffic. It was one of the first clear demonstrations that ISPs are technologically capable of interfering with your Internet connection, and that they may not even tell you about it. After receiving numerous complaints, the FCC in 2008 stepped in and threw the book at Comcast, requiring them to stop blocking BitTorrent. The Comcast-BitTorrent experience put net neutrality at the top of the FCC agenda.

Yet now that the FCC has formally issued draft net neutrality regulations, they have a huge copyright loophole in them — a loophole that would theoretically permit Comcast to block BitTorrent just like it did in 2007 — simply by claiming that it was "reasonable network management" intended to "prevent the unlawful transfer of content."

You heard that right — under these conditions, the new proposed net neutrality regulations would allow the same practices that net neutrality was first invoked to prevent, even if these ISP practices end up inflicting collateral damage on perfectly lawful content and activities.

When we saw the loophole, we had to ask ourselves, "Is this real net neutrality?" And the answer was simply, "No." The entertainment industry is already pressuring ISPs to become copyright cops. Carving a copyright loophole in net neutrality would leave your lawful activities at the mercy of overbroad copyright filtering schemes, and we already have plenty of experience with copyright enforcers targeting legitimate users by mistake, carelessness, or design.

If net neutrality regulations are to be taken seriously at all, then the loophole must be closed. Sign the petition to demand real net neutrality from the FCC.

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Putting the "Public" In Publicly-Funded Research

Sometimes an idea is so blindingly, obviously good that you have to wonder why it hasn’t already been implemented.

A few years ago, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had an idea like that. Why not create a free, public, online archive of findings from research studies that were funded by Americans' tax dollars? That way, members of the public could keep up to date on the latest health findings by reading about discoveries that they paid for and would otherwise be unable to access. To ensure academic publishers could recoup any investment made by publishing research in traditional print journals, scientists could wait 12 months before making the research available to the public, but no more. The policy was voluntary at first, then made mandatory — much to the consternation of commercial science publishers. (Make no mistake — scholarly publishing is a significant profit center, for publishers if not authors. For example, a subscription to Brain Research, the leading neuroscience journal, can cost a library over $23,000. Much of that is pure profit, as authors provide the content free of charge.) When Rep. John Conyers introduced legislation to end the policy earlier this year, public criticism and a wave of protest helped stop the bill in its tracks.

Now the Obama Administration (specifically, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP) is considering extending the policy to other federal agencies that fund academic research. For example, the National Science Foundation spends $6 billion a year supporting basic research in America's colleges and universities. If the fruits of that research were publicly accessible online, the taxpayers who actually paid for it could read and use it in new and interesting ways, just as patients and their families have used the newly accessible NIH-sponsored medical studies to help make informed medical decisions. Scholars and entrepreneurs could also access the research, promoting innovation in science and technology. Moreover, creating a publicly available research archive is simply fair. Your tax dollars paid for this research; you should have a chance to actually see those dollars at work.

Now, the public has an opportunity to show support for this innovative, common sense idea. Since December, the OSTP has been hosting an involved discussion on their blog, asking for input on every angle of public access, including which federal agencies should adopt public access policies, which file formats could help solve compliance and archival issues, and what the ongoing role of the government should be. The OSTP was originally going to close the comment period on January 7, but the moderators have decided to keep it open until January 14 in light of the holiday season's effect on the ability of the public to comment. If you care about the availability of research and want the government to implement a policy that's good for innovation, consider contributing to the great discussion taking place on the OSTP blog. You can find the complete collection of public access policy blog posts here, and the most recent call for comments here. Even though commercial publishers don't like it, public access policies are an obvious way to maximize the usefulness of scientific research that taxpayers pay for. Head to the OSTP blog and share some ideas for how it should be done.

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Fighting Internet Censorship in Australia

Our fellow Internet freedom advocates at Electronic Frontiers Australia are gearing up for an important fight in the new year as the Australian government proposes mandatory national Internet filters with a secret blacklist. EFA is looking for volunteers and colleagues — particularly Australians, but they can use help from outside Australia as well — to help take on this critical issue. As Lelia Green wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald, the censorship proposal risks "legitimating a range of repressive policies pursued by some of the globe's least accountable governments."

In 2006, the New York Times reported that the People's Republic of China was defending its Internet censorship and surveillance practices by claiming that they were not particularly different from those of other countries. The Times reported that a Chinese official argued (in the newspaper's paraphrase) that "the controls [China] places on Web sites and Internet service providers in mainland China do not differ much from those employed by the United States and European countries".

"If you study the main international practices in this regard you will find that China is basically in compliance with the international norm," [Liu Zhengrong] said. "The main purposes and methods of implementing our laws are basically the same."

[...]

"It is clear that any country's legal authorities closely monitor the spread of illegal information," he said. "We have noted that the U.S. is doing a good job on this front."

This argument sounded like a weak rationalization in 2006, and the Times noted various qualitative differences between Internet restrictions in the PRC and those in liberal democracies. But researchers have told us that governments around the world, including Australia's, seem eager to chip away at those differences. The forthcoming book Access Controlled from the OpenNet Initiative, according to its authors, reports on an alarming trend where "Internet filtering, censorship of Web content, and online surveillance are increasing in scale, scope, and sophistication around the world, in democratic countries as well as in authoritarian states." The OpenNet Initiative researchers have also noted that governments are increasingly looking to other countries' practices as precedents. Soon illiberal regimes' claims that Internet censorship and national firewalls are a widespread international norm could ring less hollow. Some year soon, it may be sober fact rather than rationalization.

EFA's fight against Internet censorship in Australia is crucial. We hope Internet users around the world will join it.

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A Pirate-Finder General for the UK?

Copyright law involves a delicate balance, made all the more fragile by the number of people who now find their every day actions affected by it. Some people benefit, others find ordinary behaviors made illegal. Reforming copyright in the face of new technology is a vital process, but it needs to be performed carefully, with all affected parties considered in the debate.

In the UK, the Labour administration's impatience to pass its "Digital Economy" agenda, risks throwing that balance utterly out the window.

In less than 12 hours' time, the draft Digital Economy Bill will be released. It will apparently include a provision granting the Secretary of State &mdash currently Lord Peter Mandelson &mdash the power to make statutory instruments that can re-write Britain's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act with the minimum of Parliamentary debate,.

Secondary legislation has been used in a sweeping manner before in the UK. After the UK's RIPA surveillance act was passed with promises that it would only be used for serious crime, secondary legislation was subsequently proposed that expanded its snooping powers to dozens of government bodies, including the Post Office and the Food Standards Agency.

Using secondary legislation as part of the Digital Economy Bill is far more dangerous. This bill would grant the Secretary of State sweeping powers to mess with the very fundamentals of the UK copyright system law, ignoring the voices of UK citizens to meet the needs of one set of interest holders:

In a letter to Harriet Harman, the committee leader who would be responsible for granting such powers, Mandelson says he is "writing to seek your urgent agreement" to changes to the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act "for the purposes of facilitating prevention or reduction of online copyright infringement".

Once the Digital Economy Bill is passed by Parliament, the Secretary of State could effect wide-ranging changes to the copyright system very swiftly. To give an example of why Mandelson feels it necessary to arbitrarily transform the law, in this same letter, he expressed his concern over the recent emergence of "cyberlockers" as a threat to the media industries.

"Cyberlocker" is the entertainment industry's name for services like Amazon's S3, Dropbox, Apple's MobileMe iDisk, Ubuntu One, or YouSendIt that allow you to easily upload, synchronise and share files with friends. Businesses and individuals use these services every day to collaborate with colleagues and pass on files like family photos or large work documents. In Britain, this entire large, useful Net market innovation could be regulated out of existence without even a vote. And if you think that is not likely to happen, consider that the entertainment industry successfully lobbied the US Trade Representative to include an obligation on the South Korean government to target the same sector (“webhard services”) in the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement (see the third side letter).

If Mandelson is specifically seeking the power to capriciously wipe out entire fledgling industries that depend on our current copyright law, imagine what other instruments from the grab-bag of recent rightsholder demands might also be candidates for statutory instrument action. Throttling or blocking P2P? Creating joint investigation teams of police and IP owners? Filtering all Net traffic through music-infringement-filters? All of these are entertainment industry promoted proposals which judges or politicians have previously considered.

Once granted this power for these reasons the meddling would never stop. After all, this is the government that said:

If [illegal filesharing] is a massive problem we could turn on a fast, powerful response... If there is a little problem we can be more proportionate. How draconian we are will be a matter for the secretary of state to decide at the time."

The only way to stop constant ratcheting up of punishments and restrictions on innovation is to ensure that such broad powers are never granted. If you're in the UK, call your MP now and tell him or her that no Secretary of State should be able to rewrite copyright law on a whim.

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Reining in ACTA: Update and Call to Action

Last week saw the latest round of secret negotiations on ACTA, on criminal enforcement of IP, enforcement in the digital environment, and, according to one of the few public documents on the negotiations, ACTA's own "transparency". It's hard to imagine a more controversial set of IP topics -- and underlying them all is the distinct lack of transparency attached to the entire process. It's been a sore point throughout the trade agreement's long history, with pressure from the European Parliament, the Canadian delegation, and public interest groups (including EFF) in the United States to make the agreement more accountable.

We're asking the Obama Administration directly to open up the process -- but your elected officials also have a part to play. Write to your Senators now, and tell them to rein in ACTA.

Meanwhile, in the continuing absence of any true openness, reporters and analysts have had to rely on leaks and hints from the countries involved. Here's a round-up of what we know from ACTA-watchers around the world:

• The story so far: Michael Geist's timeline from October 2007 to March 2009.

• The full text of the leaked European Commission briefing memo, including a note that the content is sensitive "due to the different points of view regarding the internet chapter both within the Administration, with Congress and among stakeholders (content providers on one side, supporters of internet 'freedom' on the other)".

• Reactions from EFF, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and across the blogs.

• Open letters to Obama administration demanding transparency, signed by EFF, and joined with individuals and groups from Lawrence Lessig to the Medical Library Association.

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UK and Three Strikes: What Not to Do in an Election Year

The arbitrary termination of Internet access for repeated accusations of copyright infringement -- "three strikes" -- is as profoundly unpopular in the UK as it is elsewhere. National experts have generally come out against the idea, from government civil servants who previously omitted it from a public consultation document as too drastic, to the counter-intelligence MI5 unit, who apparently fear it will encourage an encrypted and unpoliceable darknet, to many of the artists it is supposed to protect. Net users, of course, are aghast at such a disproportionate and ineffective scheme, and 70% of Britons came out against it in a recent poll.

Nonetheless, UK Business secretary Peter Mandelson today stated explicitly that he intends to include three strikes in the upcoming digital economy bill. In a subsequent press conference, a government spokesman emphasized that the arbitrariness of this Internet enforcement mechanism will be proportional only to how ineffective it is as a deterrent:

If it [illegal filesharing] is a massive problem we could turn on a fast, powerful response... If there is a little problem we can be more proportionate. How draconian we are will be a matter for the secretary of state to decide at the time."

Is the UK really set to join France in a legally mandated three strikes regime? Even with Britain's generally government-friendly lawmaking process, that seems up for question.

A UK general election is due to occur within the next few months (the exact date is up to current Prime Minister Gordon Brown, but he is required to name the date before June 2010). The Conservative chairman for the committee considering the proposed digital economy bill has already expressed scepticism that there is time in this parliament if such a "hot potato" as three strikes is included.

The more British voters write to their MPs to complain, the hotter that potato will get. Unpopular and arbitrary proposals as three strikes will not sit well with any politicians facing an election in their near future.

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Help Protesters in Iran: Run a Tor Bridge or a Tor Relay

As turmoil over the disputed election in Iran continues, many techs are trying to find ways to help Iranian citizens safely communicate and receive information despite the barriers being established by Iranian authorities. One tactic that even moderately tech-savvy Internet users can employ is to set up a Tor relay or a Tor bridge.

More sophisticated users can skip this paragraph, but for the rest, here's the basic outline. Tor (an acronym of "The Onion Router") is free and open source software that helps users remain anonymous on the Internet. Normally, when accessing websites, your computer asks for and receives a webpage out in the open, a process that exposes your IP address, the URL of the website, and the contents of the site, among other information to third parties. When accessing websites while using Tor, your computer essentially whispers its requests for a website, to another computer, which passes the request on to another computer, which passes it on to another computer, which passes it onto the computer where the website is hosted; the reply returns in the same, chain-message manner. The whispers are encrypted, so that neither outside authorities, nor the computers in the middle of the chain, can tell what is being said, and to whom. And the website itself does not have your IP address either.

Internet users in Iran are using Tor to both (a) circumvent censorship systems and (b) remain anonymous while reading and writing on the Internet. Both are critically important to the safety of protesters, many of whom fear retaliation from the government. Preliminary reports indicate that use of the Tor client in Iran has increased in the days after the contested election.

However, Tor's design relies on a robust network of "volunteer computers" (a.k.a. relays) to pass messages back and forth. This means that the speed and quality of a Tor users' browsing experience relies extensively on the number of volunteer computers there are to pass messages along. This is where volunteers can make a difference -- setting up additional relays improves access for dissident Iranians and other users of the Tor network. The more people who help out, the better and more quickly the network runs. If you're interested in helping out, find and follow instructions for configuring a Tor relay on the Tor website.

Those looking to help fight censorship should also consider providing a Tor bridge. Bridges come into play when an ISP decides to try blocking users' access to the Tor network. (For now, there seems to only be anecdotal evidence of Iran attempting to block the use of Tor. However, Iran has recntly been practicing reactive and centralized blocking, which makes any effective block of Tor far more likely.) The Tor bridge configuration differs from a relay in that your computer does not appear in the public Tor network. Instead, users looking for access to the Internet through Tor can receive your Tor routing information through more private channels, then configure their Tor client to transmit requests through your computer. By not appearing in the public Tor network, your Tor routing information is less likely to end up on an ISP filter and can provide help for a longer period of time -- but recognize that the network needs both relays and bridges.

Tor provides strong protections for its users, but if you plan to use it to access the Net, take time to fully understand its limitations. Check the Tor "Warning" section for more information. You should also consider any limitations that may exist in your arrangement with your ISP.

If you have other questions about setting up a Tor bridge or relay, please check the Running a Tor relay FAQ page. For other concerns, The Onion Router Wiki may help.

For understanding the technical conditions of the Iranian Internet, we have found the Open Network Initiative's ongoing research, Arbor Network's network analyses, and the Tor Project's own blog status reports to be informative.

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Stand Up for Your Right To Read

Last month, a group called The Author's Guild raised loud objections to the
text-to-speech feature in Amazon's new Kindle 2. They claimed that reading a book out-loud is a violation of US copyright law.

We had hoped that Amazon would stand up to this legally baseless bullying and support their customers. But, instead, they caved, and allowed publishers to deactivate the Kindle's text-to-speech capabilities using the device's built-in DRM.

Presumably, Amazon and The Author's Guild hoped this back-room deal would go unnoticed. Instead, consumers have taken a stand and formed The Reading Rights Coalition:

The groups below represent 15 million Americans who cannot read print because of blindness, dyslexia, spinal cord injury and other print disabilities. Reading disabled persons affected by the Authors’ Guild request to remove the text to speech function on Kindle 2 include school children, the elderly, professionals, university students, returning veterans, and yes, your neighbors, family members and friends.

The publishing industry shouldn't have veto power over new technology. If you care about the right to read, consider joining The Reading Rights Coalition this Tuesday for a protest at The Author's Guild's headquarters in New York City.

You can learn more at the DAISY Consortium Newsletter and on the Knowledge Ecology International Blog.

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Sunshine Week: Commonsense Transparency from ReadTheBill.org

Anyone that has attempted to keep a close eye on the work of Congress has experienced the frustration of seeing attempts to sneak new language into a bill hours before a vote, or, as we saw often in the fight against the FISA Amendments Act, seeing legislators disappear behind closed doors during critical moments of a debate. Recently, we watched carefully during the stimulus bill debate for a rumored amendment seeking to allow ISPs to apply copyright filters to customers' Internet connections. And today, Paul Blumenthal at the Sunlight Foundation posted examples of legislators being blindsided by last-minute conference committee changes to the stimulus bill -- changes that allegedly allowed bailout-recipient A.I.G. to issue massive bonuses to executives. During these episodes, the machinery of power is driven behind closed doors, where even legislators are prevented from inspecting the process for errors or corruption.

The Sunlight Foundation's ReadTheBill.org is pushing for a simple solution: Congress should post all bills online 72 hours before before they are debated. With such a rule in place, members of the public would be able to inspect legislation and have a real chance to express their feelings to their elected representatives. As we inspect issues of government transparency and the public's right to know during Sunshine Week, consider signing ReadTheBill.org's simple petition encouraging Congress to take the commonsense step of allowing everyone to read and consider bills before they're made into laws -- not after.

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Help EFF Make Open Government a Reality

On his first day in office, President Obama took the advice of EFF and other nonprofits, ordering federal agencies to share more information with the public — particularly emphasizing openness in response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. This is a great first step, but we need your support to make sure it becomes a reality.

Over the past two and a half years, EFF has filed hundreds of FOIA requests and made thousands of pages of once-secret documents available to the public on our website. Our FOIA work has revealed details about the FBI’s improper use of National Security Letters, which helped prompt Senator Leahy to call for an investigation of former Attorney General Gonzales shortly before Gonzales’ resignation. We’ve also uncovered the Department of Homeland Security's internal policies on searching and interrogating travelers at the border, as well as information about the technology the government uses to wiretap cell phones.

As part of Sunshine Week, we're posting scores of never-before seen documents on several controversial government initiatives, including the FBI’s Investigative Data Warehouse and DCS 3000 surveillance program, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Automated Targeting System and ADVISE data-mining project. We're also making all of our FOIA documents more accesssible than ever before with a new search tool that will let anyone conduct keyword searches across all the documents in our collection.

We're also currently fighting in the courts for a broad range of additional records, including documentation of the telecom carriers' lobbying efforts regarding their role in warrantless wiretapping, and for information about secret negotiations over international intellectual property law.

Of course, the release of these new documents is just one step in the ongoing fight for greater government transparency. Already, despite President Obama's memo, lawyers at the Department of Justice appear to be sticking to the Bush administration's policy of keeping information secret. In these situations, EFF will continue to pressure the government to remember its obligations to transparency and to the public.

Sunshine Week, celebrated March 15-22, is a perfect time to support the principles of open government and freedom of information. With your support, EFF will continue to advocate and litigate in support of a more transparent, honest government. Donate to EFF during Sunshine Week, and help shine a light on government secrets! It's time to make open government a reality.

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