The Motion Picture Association Doesn’t Get To Decide Who The First Amendment Protects

Copyright

from the that's-not-how-any-of-this-works dept

Twelve years ago, internet users spoke up with one voice to reject a law that would build censorship into the internet at a fundamental level. This week, the Motion Picture Association (MPA), a group that represents six giant movie and TV studios, announced that it hoped we’d all forgotten how dangerous this idea was. The MPA is wrong. We remember, and the internet remembers.

What the MPA wants is the power to block entire websites, everywhere in the U.S., using the same tools as repressive regimes like China and Russia. To it, instances of possible copyright infringement should be played like a trump card to shut off our access to entire websites, regardless of the other legal speech hosted there. It is not simply calling for the ability to take down instances of infringement—a power they already have, without even having to ask a judge—but for the keys to the internet. Building new architectures of censorship would hurt everyone, and doesn’t help artists.

The bills known as SOPA/PIPA would have created a new, rapid path for copyright holders like the major studios to use court orders against sites they accuse of infringing copyright. Internet service providers (ISPs) receiving one of those orders would have to block all of their customers from accessing the identified websites. The orders would also apply to domain name registries and registrars, and potentially other companies and organizations that make up the internet’s basic infrastructure. To comply, all of those would have to build new infrastructure dedicated to site-blocking, inviting over-blocking and all kinds of abuse that would censor lawful and important speech.

In other words, the right to choose what websites you visit would be taken away from you and given to giant media companies and ISPs. And the very shape of the internet would have to be changed to allow it.

In 2012, it seemed like SOPA/PIPA, backed by major corporations used to getting what they want from Congress, was on the fast track to becoming law. But a grassroots movement of diverse Internet communities came together to fight it. Digital rights groups like EFF, Public Knowledge, and many more joined with editor communities from sites like Reddit and Wikipedia to speak up. Newly formed grassroots groups like Demand Progress and Fight for the Future added their voices to those calling out the dangers of this new form of censorship. In the final days of the campaign, giant tech companies like Google and Facebook (now Meta) joined in opposition as well.

What resulted was one of the biggest protests ever seen against a piece of legislation. Congress was flooded with calls and emails from ordinary people concerned about this steamroller of censorship. Members of Congress raced one another to withdraw their support for the bills. The bills died, and so did site blocking legislation in the US. It was, all told, a success story for the public interest.

Even the MPA, one of the biggest forces behind SOPA/PIPA, claimed to have moved on. But we never believed it, and they proved us right time and time again. The MPA backed site-blocking laws in other countries. Rightsholders continued to ask US courts for site-blocking orders, often winning them without a new law. Even the lobbying of Congress for a new law never really went away. It’s just that today, with MPA president Charles Rivkin openly calling on Congress “to enact judicial site-blocking legislation here in the United States,” the MPA is taking its mask off.

Things have changed since 2012. Tech platforms that were once seen as innovators have become behemoths, part of the establishment rather than underdogs. The Silicon Valley-based video streamer Netflix illustrated this when it joined MPA in 2019. And the entertainment companies have also tried to pivot into being tech companies. Somehow, they are adopting each other’s worst aspects.

But it’s important not to let those changes hide the fact that those hurt by this proposal are not Big Tech but regular internet users. Internet platforms big and small are still where ordinary users and creators find their voice, connect with audiences, and participate in politics and culture, mostly in legal—and legally protected—ways. Filmmakers who can’t get a distribution deal from a giant movie house still reach audiences on YouTube. Culture critics still reach audiences through zines and newsletters. The typical users of these platforms don’t have the giant megaphones of major studios, record labels, or publishers. Site-blocking legislation, whether called SOPA/PIPA, “no fault injunctions,” or by any other name, still threatens the free expression of all of these citizens and creators.

No matter what the MPA wants to claim, this does not help artists. Artists want their work seen, not locked away for a tax write-off. They wanted a fair deal, not nearly five months of strikes. They want studios to make more small and midsize films and to take a chance on new voices. They have been incredibly clear about what they want, and this is not it.

Even if Rivkin’s claim of an “unflinching commitment to the First Amendment” was credible from a group that seems to think it has a monopoly on free expression—and which just tried to consign the future of its own artists to the gig economy—a site-blocking law would not be used only by Hollywood studios. Anyone with a copyright and the means to hire a lawyer could wield the hammer of site-blocking. And here’s the thing: we already know that copyright claims are used as tools of censorship.

The notice-and-takedown system created by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, for example, is abused time and again by people who claim to be enforcing their copyrights, and also by folks who simply want to make speech they don’t like disappear from the Internet. Even without a site-blocking law, major record labels and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement shut down a popular hip hop music blog and kept it off the internet for over a year without ever showing that it infringed copyright. And unscrupulous characters use accusations of infringement to extort money from website owners, or even force them into carrying spam links.

This censorious abuse, whether intentional or accidental, is far more damaging when it targets the internet’s infrastructure. Blocking entire websites or groups of websites is imprecise, inevitably bringing down lawful speech along with whatever was targeted. For example, suits by Microsoft intended to shut down malicious botnets caused thousands of legitimate users to lose access to the domain names they depended on. There is, in short, no effective safeguard on a new censorship power that would be the internet’s version of police seizing printing presses.

Even if this didn’t endanger free expression on its own, once new tools exist, they can be used for more than copyright. Just as malfunctioning copyright filters were adapted into the malfunctioning filters used for “adult content” on tumblr, so can means of site blocking. The major companies of a single industry should not get to dictate the future of free speech online.

Why the MPA is announcing this now is anyone’s guess. They might think no one cares anymore. They’re wrong. Internet users rejected site blocking in 2012 and they reject it today.

Republished from the EFF Deep Links blog.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, copyright, pipa, site blocking, sopa
Companies: mpa, mpaa

Chemtrail Legislation Is The New Normal In A Severely Abnormal America

Stupidity

from the Make-America-Stupid-Again dept

It’s enough to make you want to shoot yourself in the face in embarrassment. It’s enough to make you want to dress as a mime when visiting Europe because at least you won’t be mistaken for an American. It’s enough to make you wonder how the Land of the Free became the Land of the Besotted Idiots so quickly during the four years overseen by a lame duck president more famous for sexual harassment, failed lawsuits, and bankruptcies than actual governance.

And yet, here we are. We live in a post-truth America. To be sure, America’s relationship with the truth has always been a bit iffy, given a history that includes genocide and slavery. But we always thought we were continuously improving, however slightly, year-over-year. That all came to a halt in 2016, when the Electoral College decided Donald Trump was our new president.

Trump had already shown he was incapable of competently managing property located on prime NYC real estate. Post-election, he proved he was incapable of managing international relationships, pandemic protocols, and his own re-election campaign.

But Trump did achieve something: he rallied the masses to proclaim his election loss “stolen.” He stoked the fires of several conspiracy theories, aided and abetted by tech shitlords (Elon Musk) and social media gadflies (Joe Rogan, etc.) to subvert the normal (if boring) operation of government machinery. Trump acolytes and supplicants took control of local governments, crafting spittle-flecked legislation comprehensible only to those incapable of understanding anything normal and willing to back legislation that reads more like a rejected letter to the editor than anything a legislator should ever seriously consider submitting to their legislature.

Thanks to this turn of events — spearheaded by a president who promoted conspiracy theories, referred to COVID-19 as the “kung flu,” and otherwise ensured no one would take him seriously but the least serious of constituents — the country is now overrun by legislators who have abdicated their responsibility to the general public in favor of embracing the most embarrassing members of their voting base.

And that voting base is filled with people too cowardly to just say “It’s the Jews,” even when represented by legislators who say “It’s the Jews.” It’s pre-WWII Germany all over the place, with the people who blame any outsider (immigrants, Jews, Blacks, liberals) for any friction they encounter in their personal lives turning out in record numbers to elevate the most shameless of bigots to governmental positions.

To justify this elevation of hate, voters (and the legislators that cater to them) entertain large number of conspiracy theories, including those that have been debunked for longer than they’ve been alive.

Enter the new era of “chemtrail” legislation. This new wave appeases an extremely shitty voter base by doing two things: giving credence to chemtrail conspiracy theories and/or preventing anyone from engaging in projects that might result in the limitation of greenhouse gases or other side effects of climate change.

It’s win-win for these fuckheads. And that’s why we’re now seeing batshit insane legislation spreading from the states you expect to see it in (i.e., the “Red” states) to areas where normality has long been the accepted state of affairs.

Let’s turn it over to Kevin Underhill and his insanely amusing and informational blog, Lowering the Bar. Recounting the recent effort by the Tennessee legislature to enact an anti-chemtrail bill, Underhill notes that the legislature was far too cowardly to enact an extremely helpful amendment that would have made it clear exactly what was going on here.

Sadly, the House refused to adopt a second proposed amendment to the bill, this one proposed by Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D–Nashville). Amendment No. 2 looked an awful lot like Amendment No. 1 (which inserted the chemtrails stuff), but with a couple of tweaks.

And what was this addition to the proposed conspiracy theory-coddling bill? Well, it was an amendment that treated the proposed law with all the respect it deserved.

WHEREAS, it is documented, among those within the pseudoscience of cryptozoology, that there exists a large and hairy human-like creature that inhabits forests of North America, and

WHEREAS, this creature is commonly referred to as a yeti, Bigfoot, or Sasquatch…

This amendment was rejected, apparently because the self-serious people engaging in chemtrail conspiracy theories felt this undercut the seriousness of banning something that wasn’t happening, has never happened, and will never happen.

[O]nly 18 representatives voted for the Sasquatch Amendment, with 71 voting against. 

But the problem is not confined to the areas where the voting base views itself as “conservative,” while approving of the government expanding its remit to cover anything subject to conspiracy theories, Jewish control, or involving non-whites existing in America.

As Underhill reports, even the great liberal playground that is the Minnesota legislature has been subjected to a conspiracy theory fueled bill by state legislators who appear to believe catering to the most ignorant voters is a long-term strategy worth pursuing.

Minnesota’s SF 4630 makes Tennessee’s bill look positively sane. That one would not only ban chemtrailing—or as the bill pseudoscientifically describes it, “stratospheric aerosol injection”—it is also super-worried about “excessive electromagnetic radiation” that the same conspirators are trying to harm brains and/or the environment with. And if you have been releasing “xenobiotic agents” in Minnesota, you could be in big trouble if this passes. What are xenobiotic agents? The bill defines “xenobiotic” as “foreign to the body or to an ecological system,” and I guarantee you that whoever drafted this thing has no idea what that might mean.

There are no safe spaces in America. As we’ve suspected all along, the people with the least common sense command the most power. While we’ve seen the occasional aberration over the years, four years of Trump has resulted in a legislative dynamic where being seriously stupid is not only acceptable, but might actually be the best way to ensure re-election. Canada has never looked so good, no matter what libertarians might opine about its free healthcare and general politeness.

The only things keeping America from becoming the new Third Reich are its square footage and its diversity. But let’s not fool ourselves. Legislators who’ve traded in their reputation for a remora-esque existence on the Trump Train deeply desire a country where bigotry is backed by government force. And while the current Israel-Palestine conflict makes it extremely difficult to go after Jews directly, the moment that pressure resides, these idiots will start dipping their conspiracy into the deep well of antisemitism that has always existed in this country, adding those “foreigners” to the long list of non-whites they believe are ruining what used to be a pretty great nation.

Filed Under: alternative facts, bigfoot, chemtrails, conspiracy theories, gop, minnesota, tennessee, xenobiotics

Daily Deal: The Complete MATLAB Programming Master Class

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creating of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages. That’s all well and good, but it means nothing if you don’t have a firm grasp of the data types used within MATLAB. In this course you’ll cover not just data types, but also dive into their functions and how to perform conversions to make analysis and programming a greater experience. The Complete MATLAB Programming Master Class is on sale for $30.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Will Elon Sue? NBC News Finds, Yet Again, That ExTwitter Has ‘Verified’ Neo-Nazi Accounts, With Ads Appearing Next To Their Content

Content Moderation

from the free-speech-absolutism-sure-seems-different dept

Elon Musk does not seem to like it much when reports point out that ExTwitter appears to have a neo-Nazi issue. Of course, he could respond to these reports by noting that, as a “free speech absolutist,” that includes those who support Nazism, as distasteful as that is, but he stands by that horrific speech because of his belief in free speech.

That would suggest some sort of principles, even if you might consider them confused and distorted principles, at the very least.

However, the last few times organizations have pointed out the propensity of neo-Nazi content on ExTwitter, Elon Musk has done the opposite of committing to “free speech absolutism.” Instead, he’s sued those who reported on it. In August of last year, he sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). That lawsuit was recently tossed out of court as an obvious SLAPP suit.

And then, in November, he sued Media Matters for its report on advertising from big companies appearing next to content posted by neo-Nazis. Actually, he sued them twice. Once in Texas and then again in Ireland. He also urged state Attorneys General to go after Media Matters as well, which both Texas’ Ken Paxton and Missouri’s Andrew Bailey have done. Just last week, the court blocked Paxton’s investigation as clearly an attempt to suppress free speech.

In other words, while Musk could have taken a “free speech absolutist” response to these claims, he has instead chosen to take a “I believe in free speech for neo-Nazis, but not for anyone who criticizes me” approach to these things.

And, look, if you’re looking to create chilling effects and silence other critics, that could work. In the Paxton ruling that came out last week, it was revealed that Media Matters has chosen not to publish other stories it was working on about ExTwitter out of fear of further legal action. That is the very definition of abusing state power to suppress speech.

However, such tactics can also backfire in a big way. After Musk sued Media Matters, we noted that it caused a lot more people to begin investigating neo-Nazis on ExTwitter.

And now, the latest is NBC News, which has published a report highlighting that it has found 150 verified accounts on the site pushing pro-Nazi content.

NBC News found that at least 150 paid “Premium” subscriber X accounts and thousands of unpaid accounts have posted or amplified pro-Nazi content on X in recent months, often in apparent violation of X’s rules. The paid accounts posting the content all consistently posted antisemitic or pro-Nazi material. Examples included praise of Nazi soldiers, sharing of Nazi symbols and denials of the Holocaust. 

The pro-Nazi content is not confined to the fringes of the platform. During one seven-day period in March, seven of the most widely shared pro-Nazi posts on X accrued 4.5 million views in total. One post with 1.9 million views promoted a false and long-debunked conspiracy theory that 6 million Jews did not die in the Holocaust. More than 5,300 verified and unverified accounts reshared that post, and other popular posts were reshared hundreds of times apiece. 

To be clear, Musk has every right to set his policies however he wants. And that can include not just allowing neo-Nazis to post bigoted, false, hateful propaganda on his site, but even to have their accounts “verified” (which, of course, no longer means “verified” in any real sense).

Also, given the number of users on ExTwitter (large, though shrinking), it’s entirely reasonable to argue that the company doesn’t realize it has all these neo-Nazi accounts, or that they are verified accounts. Many people wouldn’t believe that, but it’s also a possible explanation if the company doesn’t want to just flat out say “we’re the Nazi bar, all are welcome.”

Of course, as with the Media Matters’s report, NBC also found ads running on many of these accounts, including ads from some big name companies:

NBC News found ads running on 74 of the 150 premium accounts, either on their profile pages or in the replies below their posts. The advertisers included SiriusXM, The Hollywood Reporter and Cisco subsidiary Splunk. SiriusXM declined to comment. Penske Media, the owner of The Hollywood Reporter, declined to comment. Splunk did not respond to requests for comment sent by email. 

Ads from other companies appeared among the search results for a Holocaust-denial hashtag. 

Again, it’s entirely possible to argue that this is due to mistakes made in the vetting process. But, if that’s how Musk was going to argue this, he could have said that in response to Media Matters’ report a few months ago. Instead, he sued. Twice. And convinced states to open bullshit investigations.

So far, at least, ExTwitter hasn’t threatened to sue NBC News. The company whined that NBC only provided it with 13 examples, rather than the full 150. But, of course, it’s not NBC News’ job to help ExTwitter find the neo-Nazis on its platform:

Meanwhile, Elon has responded to an account claiming that the NBC story was debunked (it has not been) by effectively confirming the story and suggesting that 150 accounts is a pretty small number.

And, this is a perfectly reasonable response. But it would sound a lot more honest if Musk hadn’t sued two other organizations for reporting similar things. Also, at no point did NBC suggest that it had found all of the neo-Nazis posting on the site. Indeed, the article admits that it only did a relatively simple search and reported what it found.

Again, there are all sorts of ways that Musk and ExTwitter could respond to this, but so far, it’s choosing some of the silliest ways (though, at least Musk isn’t talking about lawsuits… yet).

Filed Under: advertising, content moderation, elon musk, free speech, neo nazis
Companies: nbc news, twitter, x

The GOP Is Blocking A Last Ditch Effort To Bring Cheap Broadband To Poor Americans

Broadband

from the same-old,-same-old dept

The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), part of the 2021 infrastructure bill, currently provides 23+ million low-income Americans a $30 broadband discount every month. But those 23 million Americans are poised to soon lose the discount because key Republicans — who routinely dole out billions of dollars on far dumber fare — refuse to fund a $4-$7 billion extension.

As a result, the FCC is informing struggling Americans that their broadband bills are all about to jump significantly as the program starts to wind down. There’s a last ditch effort to save the program, but it’s unclear if it has traction in one of the least productive Congress’ in U.S. history:

“Speaking at an event hosted by USTelecom on Thursday, FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks called the ACP “the most effective program we’ve ever had” for incentivizing low-cost internet plans, and he mourned the fact that its time could be running out.”

The ACP’s death is an interesting case because the telecom industry generally supports it, many Republicans support it, and many Democrats support it.

Big ISPs support it because it basically involves throwing money at them to temporarily reduce broadband prices that wouldn’t be high in the first place if big ISPs hadn’t spent the last 40 years lobbying to crush competition and regulatory oversight (usually with the help of corrupt centrist Democrats and Republicans).

But a handful of Republicans, nervous that the popular program could help Democrats during an election season, are engaging in obstructionism. House Speaker Mike Johnson appears to be slow walking the emergency funding proposal to death.

Most “both sides” news orgs, always wary of upsetting sources and advertisers, lack the courage to inform readers the program is being specifically killed by Republicans. And given these kinds of bread and butter issues don’t generate clicks and ad engagement in the attention infotainment economy, many outlets just won’t cover it at all.

Republicans claim their concern is about costs but it’s not, really; you’ll recall the Trump tax cuts doled out $42 billion to AT&T alone in exchange for a bunch of layoffs. These same Republicans routinely throw absurd gobs of money at all sorts of ideological dipshittery and badly managed corporate handouts. The fiscal conservatism is a performance the press is happy to help parrot to the public.

Some ISPs, like Verizon, say they’ll continue to offer discounts to poor people for about six months even after the program ends. At which point poor Americans are just shit out of luck, and their monthly bill will return to its usual expensive state, potentially driving them offline.

The $42.5 billion in infrastructure bill broadband subsidies flowing to the states try to at least nudge big ISPs to offer a cheaper, low-income broadband plan if they take taxpayer money, but they’re lobbying to have those requirements killed.

Ideally you wouldn’t need such requirements or programs like the ACP (that temporarily and artificially lower rates) if we had policymakers with the political courage to take direct aim at the real problem: highly concentrated monopoly power and the corruption and regulatory capture that protects it.

That’s what causes broadband competitive market failure and high prices across much of the U.S., but Congress and the FCC can’t even admit it exists, much less propose a solution that might offend telecom giants closely tethered to our domestic surveillance systems. The ACP was a backup plan to do the bare minimum for the least fortunate; and Congress couldn’t even accomplish that.

Filed Under: ACP, Affordable Connectivity Program, broadband, congress, fcc, high speed internet, low income

Bell Canada, After Nixxing Most Hardware DVR, Changes Cloud PVR Recording Retention

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the gotcha! dept

We’ve written about Bell Canada plenty over the years and not typically for good reasons. This is a company that wanted to ban VPNs to combat people getting around geo-blocked content, has a habit of acting petulant when it comes to regulators, and has engaged in other consumer-unfriendly practices. So, not the best reputation when it comes to treating its own customers, and the larger public, particularly well. You can think of them as something like a Canadian version of Comcast in the States.

As you might expect from a company that likes to wield a heavy hand, Bell Canada has been removing the ability for subscribers to use 3rd party DVRs in their homes, pushing people instead to use its cloud-based PVR platform to record content instead. Customers that signed up for that did so under an advertisement of a 1 year retention policy on recorded content.

Until today, that is, when Bell Canada announced and will begin enforcing a 60 day retention instead. Suprise!

On May 1, Fibe TV will automatically delete recordings stored on its Cloud PVR (personal video recorder) offering once the recordings hit 61 days of age, as confirmed by Canadian online newspaper Daily Hive. Currently, customers maintain access to recordings stored via Cloud PVR for 365 days.

Fibe TV apparently started alerting customers of the upcoming change this month.

A Bell Canada spokesperson, Jacqueline Michelis, minimized the idea of disruption to customers, telling Daily Hive: “The viewing of nearly all recordings takes place within 60 days, so there is minimal impact to customers.” Michelis didn’t provide more details on how Bell Canada arrived at this conclusion.

That last bit isn’t surprising considering just how many people are jumping into Bell support forums to express just how pissed off they are about this. And the flippant comments from the spokesperson don’t even bother to address the fact that Bell customers were told there would be one retention policy only to find out that it got 5/6th shorter now that they’ve signed up. There’s a term for that and it’s called a bait and switch.

And it doesn’t seem like Bell can even get implementing this right. While Bell has also made comments about this being a way to free up storage space, that certainly isn’t the case on the actual end user side.

Customers have turned to Bell Canada’s online support forum to share their discontent with the changes, with some saying that they don’t align with the services they expected to receive when signing up for Fibe TV. Thankfully, Bell Canada won’t be able to delete recordings stored on DVR hardware inside customers’ homes.

Other complaints are coming from users whose recordings are being deleted even when they haven’t come close to maxing out their cloud storage or if their recordings aren’t available on demand.

A user going by camisotro on Bell Canada’s online support forum called the announcement “absolutely ridiculous” and condemned what they perceived to be years of telecoms pushing back against users’ ability to record content.

To be clear, the cloud PVR costs money. $10/month, to be exact. And again, that subscription was sold with customers understanding that content would have a 1 year retention. How in the world this would not result in some kind of class action lawsuit on behalf of consumers is entirely beyond me.

Bell Canada competitors are already out with public comments committing to their own 1 year retention on cloud-based content recordings. I would imagine those competitors will have some new customers in very short order.

Filed Under: cloud pvr, cloud storage, dvr, fibe tv, pvr, retention
Companies: bell canada

Roku Eyes Patent That Would Inject Ads Into… Everything

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the dumb-is-smart dept

When last we checked in with our friends at Roku, they had made the unpopular decision to effectively “brick” user streaming hardware and television sets if users didn’t agree to a typically draconian end user agreement that effectively bans your legal right to sue the company.

Eroding your legal rights using fine print isn’t new; it’s been a U.S. corporate standard since the Supreme Court gave AT&T the green light to do so way back in 2011, and part of Roku’s plans since 2019. Being extra annoying about it was a new wrinkle; but this too isn’t all that uncommon for publicly-traded companies trying to boost growth, revenues, and market share at any cost.

But such behavior has diminishing returns, of course. You can cross a threshold where you’re so focused on boosting revenues that you forget about the end user experience and drive users to the exits through sheer annoyance.

That’s the mode Roku’s clearly in now, as made evident by recent behavior and a new patent the company has filed that would help the company force ads on top of whatever you’re watching on your Roku TV, regardless of whether or not you have a third-party device or game console attached:

“A patent application from the company spotted by Lowpass describes a system for displaying ads over any device connected over HDMI, a list that could include cable boxes, game consoles, DVD or Blu-ray players, PCs, or even other video-streaming devices. Roku filed for the patent in August 2023, and it was published in November 2023, though it hasn’t yet been granted.”

So, in other words, if you attached a third-party streaming competitor’s device to your Roku TV, and the TV detected that you had paused playback, it would insert a static or video ad into the screen. Of course it’s just a patent and doesn’t mean this will be implemented, but it is kind of representative of the broader “smart” TV sector, which cares less and less about product quality as it pursues data monetization.

For years all I’ve ever wanted from TV manufacturers is an extremely “dumb” 4K 65 inch TV that has a whole bunch of HDMI inputs, but no “smart” internals. Since I know the real money is increasingly made from spying on users and monetizing their every fart (while failing to properly secure the collected data), I’ve even been willing to pay extra for simplicity, quality, and privacy.

Yes, I know I can simply not connect my TV to the internet. But that’s not fixing my problem. Even basic HDMI switching and settings are now tethered to clunky, bloated, smart internals and GUIs that take time to load, and get slower as the TV ages. Some manufacturers also block you from basic functions unless you agree to be tracked and monetized. And yes, I could also buy a business-class set, but such options are cost prohibitive and often lack features like HDR.

Instead of having a business segment that tailors to people who simply want a quality, dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers television, the market keeps heading in the other direction (like this TV that shows ads on a second screen, constantly, even when the primary TV is off).

I know why they’re doing it, but I don’t have to like it. And I know that given the tendency of publicly-traded companies to push their luck to please Wall Street’s incessant demand for improved quarterly returns, there eventually comes a point where user annoyance causes a revolt, and the company in question usually stumbles forth anyway, oblivious.

Filed Under: 4k, ad injection, advertising, hdr, injected ads, privacy, smart tv, surveillance, television, tv
Companies: roku

Internet Child Safety Laws Will Lead To Helpful Sites Being Blocked; Just Look At Schools

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the censorship-shouldn't-be-the-answer dept

Various states and the federal government are proposing and passing a wide variety of “kid safety” laws. Almost all of them pretend that they’re about conduct of social media sites and not about the content on them, but when you boil down what the underlying concerns are, they all end up actually being about the content.

There are demands for age verification and for blocking certain kinds of “harmful” content. This content often includes things like pornography or other sexual content, as well as content about self-harm or eating disorders.

We keep trying to explain to people who support these laws that stopping such content is not as easy as you think. Indeed, attempts at removing eating disorder content have often resulted in more harm, rather than less. This is because there is user demand for the content, and they start seeking it out in darker corners of the internet, rather than on the major sites, where other users and the sites themselves are more likely to try to intervene and guide people towards resources to help with recovery.

A new article from the Markup highlights how schools are discovering just how difficult it is to stop “dangerous” content online, and their default is to just completely block sites — including tons of sites that are actually really important and useful in helping kids. In some cases, these are due to schools trying to comply with CIPA, the Children’s Internet Protection Act from 2000.

A middle school student in Missouri had trouble collecting images of people’s eyes for an art project. An elementary schooler in the same district couldn’t access a picture of record-breaking sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner to add to a writing assignment. A high school junior couldn’t read analyses of the Greek classic “The Odyssey” for her language arts class. An eighth grader was blocked repeatedly while researching trans rights.

All of these students saw the same message in their web browsers as they tried to complete their work: “The site you have requested has been blocked because it does not comply with the filtering requirements as described by the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) or Rockwood School District.”

CIPA, a federal law passed in 2000, requires schools seeking subsidized internet access to keep students from seeing obscene or harmful images online—especially porn. 

None of this should be a surprise. After all, the American Library Association rightly challenged the law after it passed. The district court said that because filtering technology sucks, it would block constitutionally protected speech. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court eventually said the law was fine.

Of course, the law was never fine, and it does not appear that the filtering technology has gotten much better in the two decades since that ruling came out.

The Markup obtained filtering records from a bunch of schools and found that they are aggressive in blocking content, possibly in a manner that is unconstitutional. But, tellingly, a lot of the content includes things that might help LGBTQ youth:

But the Rockwood web filter blocks The Trevor Project for middle schoolers, meaning that Steldt couldn’t have accessed it on the school network. Same for It Gets Better, a global nonprofit that aims to uplift and empower LGBTQ+ youth, and The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, which supports openly LGBTQ+ candidates for public office nationwide. At the same time, the filter allows Rockwood students to see anti-LGBTQ+ information online from fundamentalist Christian group Focus on the Family and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal nonprofit the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group in 2016.

According to the article, the school district’s CIO believes that they should block first, and then only unblock if someone makes “a compelling case” for why that content should be unblocked.

And it’s not just info for LGBTQ youth either. Information on sex education and abortion was also blocked in many schools, making it difficult for students trying to research those topics.

Maya Perez, a senior in Fort Worth, Texas, is the president of her high school’s Feminist Club, and she and her peers create presentations to drive their discussions. But research often proves nearly impossible on her school computer. She recently sought out information for a presentation about health care disparities and abortion access.

“Page after page was just blocked, blocked, blocked,” Perez said. “It’s challenging to find accurate information a lot of times.”

[….]

Alison Macklin spent almost 20 years as a sex educator in Colorado; at the end of her lessons she would tell students that they could find more information and resources on plannedparenthood.org. “Kids would say, ‘No, I can’t, miss,’” she remembered. She now serves as the policy and advocacy director for SIECUS, a national nonprofit advocating for sex education.

Only 29 states and the District of Columbia require sex education, according to SIECUS’ legislative tracking. Missouri is not one of them. The Rockwood and Wentzville school districts in Missouri were among those The Markup found to be blocking sex education websites. The Markup also identified blocks to sex education websites, including Planned Parenthood, in Florida, Utah, Texas, and South Carolina.

In Manatee County, Florida, students aren’t the only ones who can’t access these sites — district records show teachers are blocked from sex education websites too.

There’s a lot more in the article, but it’s a preview of the kind of thing that will happen at a much larger scale if things like “Age Appropriate Design” or “Kids Online Safety” bills keep passing. These bills seek to hold companies liable if kids access any content that adults or law enforcement deem “harmful.” We can see from just this report that, today, that already includes a ton of very helpful information for kids.

And this is already causing real harm in schools:

In the Center for Democracy and Technology’s survey, nearly three-quarters of students said web filters make it hard to complete assignments. Even accounting for youthful exaggeration, 57 percent of teachers said the same was true for their students.

Kristin Woelfel, a policy counsel at CDT, said she and her colleagues started to think of the web filters as a “digital book ban,” an act of censorship that’s as troubling as a physical book ban but far less visible. “You can see whether a book is on a shelf,” she said. By contrast, decisions about which websites or categories to block happen under the radar.

But at least, right now, under CIPA, those are limited to just computers on school campuses. If we get some of these other laws in place, it will be internet-wide blocking of some of this content as service providers seek to avoid any potential liability.

This is why opposing these laws is so important. Having them in place will do real harm, using the law to censor all sorts of useful and important content all in the false belief that the laws are “protecting” children.

Filed Under: aadc, censorship, cipa, filters, free speech, kosa, libraries, school filters

Congress Decides To Give FBI Another Free Pass On Section 702 Abuses

Policy

from the I-guess-we're-just-going-to-let-the-FBI-cook dept

It looks like we’re headed to several more years of the same old abuse. The House vote on Section 702 reauthorization — something postponed several times since EOY2023 due to infighting and out-fighting — has indicated that whatever concerns people might have about warrantless access to US persons’ communications can be handled the next time Section 702 is up for renewal.

The fourth time (yes, the fourth) was the charm for House Republicans when the lower chamber of Congress on a bipartisan basis voted to renew a controversial spying law, not without plenty of hiccups along the way.

The House approved reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, by a vote of 273-147, on Friday, with most of the bill’s dissenters coming from the body’s civil-liberty minded ultraconservative and progressive factions.

The law’s strongest advocates come from the intelligence committee, who say FISA’s warrantless surveillance provisions are essential to protecting national security.

And there you have it. A clean reauthorization is now headed to the Senate. All the House Republicans who converted their Deep State conspiracy theories into a demand for a warrant requirement found themselves matched evenly with Democrats who refused to give the Republicans what they wanted, even if it would have resulted in better protections for all Americans, not just the Americans House Speaker Mike Johnson thought were worth protecting (i.e., just congressional reps).

A measure requiring federal agents to get a warrant before searching American communications collected as part of foreign intelligence failed to pass the House of Representatives today. The measure received 212 votes for and 212 votes against.

“This is a sad day for America,” said Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.). “The Speaker doesn’t always vote in the House, but he was the tie breaker today. He voted against warrants.”

But it was largely Democrats who sank the warrant requirement. House Democrats voted against the measure 84–126, while Republicans voted for the measure 128–86.

So, there will be no warrant requirement contained in the House reauthorization. Instead, we’re stuck with what will likely be a clean re-up of Section 702 surveillance — something that includes FBI access to US persons’ communications that it has never not abused since it was granted access to this collection.

Members of the Senate have their own warrant requirement amendment to pitch, but it was thought the House — where Trump acolytes are suddenly enamored with the possibility of punishing the FBI for its excesses — might be the first place for a Section 702 warrant requirement to be voted into existence. Sadly, it was the other side of the aisle that ruined this, apparently unwilling to give House Republicans a win that would have resulted in better protections for their constituents.

The clock continues to tick down to the April 19 postponement. But, given what’s been seen here, a majority of representatives seem to feel maintaining the status quo is preferable to demanding the FBI respect the Constitution when accessing NSA collections. There’s a small chance the Senate (led by Ron Wyden’s endless pursuit of surveillance reform) can institute a warrant requirement. But, for the most part, the partisan infighting has led to nothing more than a blanket extension of the same stuff that has been problematic for years. And every year this issue goes ignored solidifies the FBI’s casual abuse of constitutional rights.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, accountability, congress, fbi, fisa, mike johnson, nsa, section 702, surveillance, warrant