1 >
576 German Artists Want EU Copyright Directive Made Worse, With No Exceptions For Memes Or Mashups
from the promise?-what-promise? dept
When the EU Copyright Directive was being drawn up, one of the main battlegrounds concerned memes. The fear was that the upload filters brought in by the new law would not be able to distinguish between legal use of copyright material for things like memes, quotation, criticism, review, caricature, parody and pastiche, and illegal infringements. Supporters of the Directive insisted that memes and such-like would be allowed, and that it was simply scaremongering to suggest otherwise. When the Directive was passed, BBC News even ran a story with the headline "Memes exempt as EU backs controversial copyright law". The MEP Mary Honeyball is quoted as saying: "There's no problem with memes at all. This directive was never intended to stop memes and mashups."
But just as supporters insisted that upload filters would not be obligatory -- and then afterwards changed their story, admitting they were the only way to implement the new law -- so people who insisted that memes and parodies would still be allowed are now demanding that they should be banned. . .
The 576 artists who wish to deny an Internet user the right to draw on copyright material for memes, parodies, mashups etc. forget that they too draw constantly on the works of others as they create -- sometimes explicitly, sometimes more subtly. To cast themselves as some kind of creative priesthood that should be granted special privileges not available to everyone else is not just unfair, but insulting and short-sighted.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter, Diaspora, or Mastodon.
Filed Under: art, article 17, copyright, copyright directive, culture, eu, exceptions, germany, memes, upload filters, user rights
2 >
Congress Decides To Ignore Trump's Ridiculous Veto Threat If Military Authorization Doesn't Wipe Out Section 230
from the good-for-them dept
This always seemed like the the most likely outcome, but Trump had complicated things with his temper tantrum demands and his threat to veto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) if it didn't include a clause wiping out Section 230. However, Congress has come to its senses and leaders of both parties have said they'll ignore his impotent veto threat and move forward with the bill as is.
The final version of the National Defense Authorization Act that will soon be considered by the House and Senate won’t include Trump’s long-sought repeal of the legal immunity for online companies, known as Section 230, according to lawmakers and aides.
Key to this was Senate Armed Services Chair Jim Inhofe pointing out the obvious:
"First of all 230 has nothing to do with the military."
That's both first of all and last of all. The whole attempt to use the NDAA to attack CDA 230 was just bizarre . . .
There is still plenty of appetite to attack Section 230. And there will be lots of dumb fights about it, but it's not going down this way.
Filed Under: congress, donald trump, ndaa, section 230, threat, veto
3 >
Content Moderation Case Study: Reclaiming A Hashtag (2020)
from the culture-wars dept
Summary: The Proud Boys, a group with a history of violent interactions, often in support of Donald Trump, received prominent attention during the first Presidential debate of 2020 between Trump and Joe Biden. Upon being asked about whether or not he would condemn white supremacist groups that support him, Trump asked for an example. When given The Proud Boys, Trump told them to “stand back and stand by,” which many in the group took to be an endorsement of their activities.
While the group has long denied that its views are racist, the group has long said that it is based around “Western chauvinism” and has been repeatedly associated with violence and white supremacist groups and individuals. Both Twitter and Facebook banned the group in 2018. . .
Decisions to be made by Facebook:
- Is banning an entire hashtag appropriate?
- When do you ban a hashtag associated with violence and bigotry?
- How do you decide when to reverse such a ban, if the hashtag has been “reclaimed” by groups seeking to promote counter-messaging?
- How do you avoid having that unbanned hashtag abused again at a later date?
Questions and policy implications to consider:
- How do you create policies for situations that may change over time?
- How do you handle situations in which the meanings of words and terms may change as other people make use of them?
- Will banning hashtags or phrases act to prevent this kind of bottom up behavior?
Resolution: By moving quickly, Facebook and Instagram were able to relatively quickly allow for this viral response to reclaim the hashtag from the group. However, it remains an open question whether or not this usage will stay, or if the group will move to reclaim it as well, creating a constant cat & mouse scenario for a content moderation team.
Originally published on the Trust & Safety Foundation website
Filed Under: content moderation, george takei, hashtags, hate groups, proud boys, reclaiming
Companies: facebook
4 >
Australian Cops Are Pre-Criming Students Too, Setting Minors Up For A Lifetime Of Harassment
from the procedural-crime-generation dept
It's not just American law enforcement agencies turning kids into criminals. They're doing it in Australia too. In Florida, the Pasco County Sheriff's Office uses software to mark kids as budding criminals, using questionable markers like D-grades, witnessing domestic violence, or being the victim of a crime. The spreadsheet adds it all up and gives deputies a thumbs up to start treating students like criminals, even if they've never committed a criminal act.
Over in Australia, the process seems to be a bit more rigorous, but the outcome is the same: non-criminals marked (possibly for life) as potential criminals who should be targeted with more law enforcement intervention.
Victorian police say a secretive data tool that tracked youths and predicted the risk they would commit crime is not being widely used, amid fears it leads to young people from culturally diverse backgrounds being disproportionately targeted.
The tool, which had been used in Dandenong and surrounding suburbs, was only revealed in interviews with police officers published earlier this year.
Between 2016 and 2018, police categorised young people as “youth network offenders” or “core youth network offenders”.
It takes a bit more to be added to this secret list -- one police have managed to keep hidden from the general public. Even the program's name remains a secret. This means parents are never informed when cops decide their kids are criminals-in-development. It also possibly means schools aren't aware the data they're feeding the police is being used this way. . .
And, like every goddamn predictive policing program that exists anywhere, it focuses on minorities and other disadvantaged residents.
In Dandenong, 67% of households spoke a language other than English at home, more than three times the national average, according to the 2016 census. Almost 80% of all residents had parents who were both born overseas, more than double the national average.
The weekly household income was $412 less than the Australian median, and the unemployment rate of 13% was almost double the national figure.
Cheer up. The cops are here to take everything that sucks about life and make it worse. Rather than address the underlying problems, law enforcement appears content to throw a spreadsheet over it and divert resources towards subjecting certain people to a lifetime of harassment. Then, when things inevitably get worse, they can ask for more money to buy more "smart" policing tech garbage that ensures this hideous, regressive loop remains unbroken.
Filed Under: abuse, australia, harassment, police, pre-crime, software
5 >
Comcast Increases Prices And Bogus Fees In The Middle Of A Pandemic
from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept
Last week, we noted how Comcast had expanded its bullshit broadband usage caps during a pandemic, insisting that the confusing, technically-unnecessary restrictions were being deployed in an alleged act of fairness. Of course as we noted, there's nothing "fair" about costly, punitive surcharges that serve absolutely no technical purpose, and exist exclusively so a monopoly can extract additional revenue from monopolized markets and captive subscribers with no alternative ISPs to choose from.
But Comcast's not just using usage caps to extract its pound of flesh. The company is raising prices across most of its services just before the new year, including significant price hikes for its TV services, broadband services, and hardware rental costs. Comcast will also be increasing a bevy of misleading fees, including another $4.50 per month for the company's "Broadcast TV Fee," which is simply some of the cost of programming broken out and hidden below the line, so that the company can falsely advertise a lower rate than you'll see on your final bill:
"Other changes for 2021 include a Broadcast TV Fee increase of up to $4.50 depending on the market; $3 increase for Internet-only service; and up to a $2.50 increase for TV boxes on the primary outlet, with a decrease of up to $2.45 for TV boxes on additional outlets," the Comcast spokesperson added. The fee for a customer's primary TV box is rising from $5 to $7.50, while the fee for additional boxes is being lowered from $9.95 to $7.50."
Comcast isn't engaged in any meaningful network upgrade projects to necessitate such notable price hikes, so this is simply a monopoly raising prices on its services, including an essential utility, during an historic health and economic crisis.
And of course Comcast can get away with this for two reasons . .
You'd think the obvious one-two punch of limited competition and regulatory capture would drive US policy makers to action. Instead, most US policymakers spend their days either pretending there is no telecom monopolization problem, or engaging in performative histrionics over "censorship" by "big tech monopolies." Having just effectively convinced the Trump FCC to neuter itself at lobbyist behest, the US government is in a weaker position than ever when it comes to standing up to telecom monopolies or protecting already struggling Americans from a telecom monopolization problem we often refuse to even acknowledge, much less fix.
Filed Under: broadband, competition, covid-19, fees, pandemic, prices, usage caps
Companies: Comcast
6 >
Trump Promises To Defund The Entire Military, If Congress Won't Let Him Punish The Internet For Being Mean To Him
from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept
President Trump has continued to throw his little temper tantrum in response to #DiaperDon trending on Twitter. When that happened, he suddenly demanded a full repeal of Section 230 -- which would not stop Twitter from showing #DiaperDon trending when the President throws a temper tantrum like a 2 year old. Then, yesterday, we heard that the White House was really pushing for the Senate to include a 230 repeal in the must pass NDAA bill that funds the military.
Late last evening I heard from people in touch with various Congressional offices saying that this entire effort by the White House was dead in the water, because almost no one had an appetite to even try to attempt it, and despite the whackadoodle conspiracy theories from the President and Senators Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, and Josh Hawley, it turns out that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't care about 230 reform.
Of course, even later last night, things took an even stupider turn, as Trump declared on Twitter that unless the NDAA included a full repeal of Section 230, he would veto it. This is all sorts of stupid and we'll break it all down in a moment, so bear with me.
That says:
Section 230, which is a liability shielding gift from the U.S. to “Big Tech” (the only companies in America that have it - corporate welfare!), is a serious threat to our National Security & Election Integrity. Our Country can never be safe & secure if we allow it to stand..... Therefore, if the very dangerous & unfair Section 230 is not completely terminated as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), I will be forced to unequivocally VETO the Bill when sent to the very beautiful Resolute desk. Take back America NOW. Thank you!
We'll get into why nearly everything in that statement is wrong, dangerous, and stupid, but I want to be crystal clear about what is happening here.
President Donald J. Trump is threatening to defund the US military, because he's upset that enough people mocked him on Twitter that it started trending.
That's it. That's the reality. This is the world we live in. And it's so insane, it needs to be repeated.
President Donald J. Trump is threatening to defund the US military, because he's upset that enough people mocked him on Twitter that it started trending.
Oh, and it's even stupider. On so many levels . . .
I could go on, but it's all just incredibly stupid. It's one thing to say that Trump is an blundering fool, but here is a legitimate threat to national security, entirely because people are making fun of him. It's frightening beyond all belief.
And this is the point that in a functioning Congress, everyone would stand up to the President and say "no, this is not how this works." Congressional Republicans need to stop enabling this utterly dangerous nonsense. Because President Donald J. Trump is threatening to defund the US military, because he's upset that enough people mocked him on Twitter that it started trending. That should not be allowed to happen.
Filed Under: donald trump, insults, intermediary liability, military spending, ndaa, section 230
7 >
French Gov't Walks Back Proposal To Make Publishing Images Of Police Officers Illegal After Massive Protests Erupt Across The Nation
from the of-course-it's-a-'national-security'-thing dept
For reasons only known to legislators who apparently had their ears bent to the point of detachment by law enforcement, the French government -- at least briefly -- believed the nation would be better secured if citizens weren't allowed to film police officers and publish those recordings online.
A bill passed through the general assembly that would have made this act a crime.
One of its most controversial elements was Article 24, which sought to criminalise the publication of images of on-duty police officers with the intent of harming their “physical or psychological integrity”.
Under the article, offenders faced sentences of up to a year in jail and fines of 45,000 euros ($53,760) for sharing images of police officers.
This sounds like an effort to prevent doxxing but, given the breadth of the language in the proposed law, it could be read to forbid recording any officer who felt they might be harmed by their actions being documented. And it could be argued (with varying degrees of success) that any publication of images/recording depicting officers in any way they didn't explicitly approve of is "harmful."
And the proposal couldn't have come at a worse time. French law enforcement is facing additional scrutiny after a recording of officers beating a black man surfaced online. . .
Faced with consecutive protests (the one over the beating that rolled into the one over the proposed law), French legislators are backtracking.
France’s national assembly on Monday dropped a key provision of a controversial bill that would have curtailed the right to film police officers during their work.
Christophe Castaner, the head of President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling LREM party, told journalists that the bill will be scrapped and rewritten, with a new version going before parliament.
For the time being, filming the police in France is still legal, even if an officer argues they've been harmed by being observed. Unfortunately, the proposal isn't completely dead. Article 24 will be revamped but it won't be until early next year. Right now, the bill is too hot to touch. A couple of months in the cooler -- and the onset of cooler weather -- might temper both protesters and belatedly irate lawmakers. If so, it could reappear mostly unchanged, especially if legislators feel the security of the nation is more important than law enforcement accountability.
Filed Under: france, free speech, photographing police, police, protests, recording police
.jfif)
No comments:
Post a Comment