The Freedom Bulletin

In the past few days, the Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA) have gone from looking like they had a good chance of passing to, at least for now, quite the contrary. Both SOPA in the House and PIPA in the Senate would target foreign websites accused of enabling piracy by forbidding advertisers and payment processors from doing business with them, as well as allowing Internet service providers to block access to them. SOPA would require search engines not to list such sites, while PIPA would allow copyright holders to request court orders shutting down access to websites accused – without proof – of hosting pirated content.

Big business groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce support the two bills, while major websites, understandably, tend to oppose them, as do libertarian-leaning people.

On Wednesday numerous websites, including Wikipedia, Google, Craigslist, Reddit, Amazon, WordPress, Mozilla, and Wired, went dark (to various extents) to protest the bills. Various public figures, including 83 of the original architects of the Internet, expressed their opposition to SOPA and PIPA. The outrage spread throughout social media, to the streets, and to congressional offices’ phone lines and inboxes, thanks to the protests organized by tech companies and websites dedicated to Internet freedom, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, NetCoalition, Black Out SOPA, Stop American Censorship, and more.

But some more unlikely people stood up for Internet freedom as well. Earlier in the week, the White House expressed its opposition to the bills in a press release, saying, ”any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity.” Additionally, at least 10 senators and 20 representatives publicly announced their opposition to the legislation, some of whom were previously co-sponsors. They include senators Jim DeMint (R-SC), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Marco Rubio (R-FL), John Cornyn (R-TX), Mark Kirk (R-IL), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and John Boozman (R-AK), as well as Representatives Rick Larsen (D-WA), Ben Quayle (R-AZ), Dennis Ross (D-FL), and Lee Terry (R-NE). Verizon, Netflix, GoDaddy, and Verizon also withdrew their support.

Furthermore, all four candidates in last night’s Republican presidential debate said they opposed SOPA and PIPA. Rick Santorum was the least enthusiastic, expressing his opposition to the bills as written but saying, “The Internet is not a free zone where people can do anything they want to do and trample the rights of other people.” Newt Gingrich called the proposed laws “exactly the wrong thing to do,” and Mitt Romney called them “too intrusive” and said, “I’m standing for freedom.” Ron Paul said he was the first house Republican to oppose the laws and added, “The Republicans, unfortunately, have been on the wrong side of this issue.”

This means that SOPA, at least for now, will not face a vote in the House. The Senate is still planning to vote on PIPA on Tuesday, but they may not have the necessary 60 votes, and any bill that passes may well be vetoed by Obama.

Having been in the pro-liberty minority many times on various issues, I think it’s great to see so many mainstream websites and organizations, and the public at large, take the right side (in my opinion) in this debate on Internet freedom. The New York Times called it “a moment when the new economy rose up against the old.” USA Today says, “Score one for tech geeks up in arms.” And Ron Paul proclaimed during the debate, “Freedom and the Constitution bring coalitions together, and this is a good example.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.

The day after widespread protests against overzealous anti-piracy bills (which I will blog about in detail tomorrow), seven of the owners and operators of popular file-storage site MegaUpload.com were indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement and money laundering. According to Reuters…

“Although the sites they operate advertised that they provide personal storage for users’ content, the indictment claims they actually trafficked in hosting television shows and movies — often offering them to users before their official release.

‘Members of the Mega Conspiracy are aware of the way that their sites are actually used by others; have themselves used the systems to upload, as well as reproduce and distribute, infringing copies of copyrighted content; and are aware that they have financially benefited directly from the infringement of copyrighted works that they are in a position to control,’ the indictment reads.”

It seems like the owners of the site were targeted not just because their site poses opportunities for copyright infringement by users, but because they themselves committed copyright infringement. But it is still a bad thing for liberty when a site that is popular and useful to law-abiding people is now shut down because of federal law enforcement. Anonymous, apparently, agrees with me on this point. The anti-authoritarian hackers’ group took down the U.S. Department of Justice website for a while tonight and, it seems, the FBI, RIAA, and MPAA websites as well.

Today Congress began holding hearings on the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (its counterpart in the Senate is the PROTECT IP Act). All around the web, various websites and organizations joined together to raise awareness and opposition to this bill, which would really make a dent in the freedom and usefulness of the Internet. According to CNN…

“If SOPA passes, copyright holders would be able to complain to law enforcement officials and get websites shut down. The law would also force intermediaries like search engines and payment processors to withhold their services from targeted websites.

That would be quite a change from the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which mandates that companies ‘act in good faith’ to remove content that infringes on copyrights and other intellectual property laws.”

According to AmericanCensorship.org, SOPA would enable websites to be shut down for mere links to copyrighted material posted by third-party users, and would make it a felony to stream a copyrighted work valued more than $2500. I would definitely recommend contacting your congressman through their site (or with your own message) to make sure this law doesn’t pass.

For more information and views, check out:

• Letter from AOL, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo, and Zynga (PDF)
• EFF blog post
• Ars Technica article

On Thursday, a federal court in Virginia ruled that Twitter had to turn over users’ private information to a grand jury investigating possible federal crimes involving WikiLeaks. This ruling affirmed a magistrate judge’s decision in March, which WikiLeaks volunteers Birgitta Jonsdottir, Jacob Appelbaum, and Rop Gonggrijp appealed, with help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union.

It is unclear exactly what data people will no longer have the right to keep private, but it most likely includes IP addresses, email and mail addresses, login and logout times, and possibly private messages. The federal government now, according to Judge Liam O’Grady’s ruling, has the right to access this information without a warrant by issuing what is called a 2703 order. These orders have a lower standard of proof  than probable cause: the government must only have “reasonable grounds” that the information is “relevant and material” to an investigation. The judge’s reasoning was that the WikiLeakers had agreed to Twitter’s privacy policy, which warns that the site could turn over data to law enforcement.

The court also ruled that the 2703 orders can remain secret, denying the WikiLeakers’ request to unseal these documents so that they can find out which other websites, in addition to Twitter, have received similar orders.

It’s not a good thing for freedom when a court rules that people’s private information cannot remain secret, but government orders for people’s private information can. I couldn’t have said it better than Jonsdottir, who called the ruling “a huge backward step for the United States’ legacy of freedom of expression and the right to privacy.”

In somewhat related news, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s mother, Christine Assange, spoke to Green Left Weekly about her son’s legal trials and tribulations, alleged WikiLeaks source Private Bradley Manning, the relationship between Australia and the US, and her plans to protest President Obama’s visit to the Australian parliament. I really admire how she is so outspoken and supportive of her son.

Read the full ruling (PDF)

Google agreed today to pay $500 million to the federal government because it allowed Canadian pharmacies to use its advertising services. The problem, according to the government, is that the drugs from Canada sold on these websites are not subject to FDA approval and might even be available without a prescription.

But in a truly free society, this should not be a problem. Companies should not be able to deceive their customers by exaggerating the benefits or hiding the risks of their products. But this doesn’t mean that people should only be allowed to have the medications that the government has determined are safe. People have a right to buy medications from other countries if they want to, including those that are risky or unproven, and people certainly have a right to make their own decisions about what medications to put into their bodies, with or without a doctor’s input.

The investigation into Google is just another example of how the FDA – in particular the Durham-Humphrey Amendment, which made it illegal to obtain many medicines without a doctor’s permission – unjustly takes away people’s liberties.

Aaron Swartz, 24, is an activist for freedom of information and one of the brains behind Reddit and RSS. Last fall, he was a fellow at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, when he decided to hack into MIT’s network in order to download documents from the paid online archive JSTOR. When he was blocked, he allegedly went to MIT, broke into a closet, and wired his computer to the network. He downloaded 4.8 million documents, planning to distribute them for free on file-sharing websites.

For his actions, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts charged him with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. He faces 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine. He made his initial appearance in federal court yesterday and is out on $100,000 bail.

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said, ”Stealing is stealing, whether you use a computer command or a crowbar and whether you take documents, data, or dollars.”

Additionally, almost every article about this case characterizes what Swartz is accused of doing as stealing.

With all due respect, Swartz did not steal anything. Stealing is when you take something from someone else, so that the other person no longer has it. This is not what Swartz (or anyone accused of copyright violation) did. He made copies of the information so that he, as well as the original owners, had it. Swartz did not deprive JSTOR of the information, because they still have it. He did, arguably, deprive them of the fees that they could have made by charging people for access to the information. But he did not steal anything.

It is up for debate whether JSTOR has a right to charge such fees (sometimes as high as $50,000) for digital files of scholastic papers. I argue that they do not. Information should not be treated as a product. Physical items and services are products, but information should be free. Swartz risked his personal safety and freedom for this principle, and for this reason, I think it is fitting that at the time he was working at Harvard’s Center for Ethics. Although his actions may have been extreme and reckless, and inconvenienced some people by causing servers to crash, he did not violate the rights of any individual. He bravely took a controversial stand for freedom of information, and for that I consider him a hero.

Sources: Boston Globe, Wired

A court hearing took place today in the effort by several WikiLeaks volunteers and associates to keep the U.S. Department of Justice from accessing their Twitter records:

The government has requested personal Twitter information for Assange, Bradley Manning – the Army private who is suspected of supplying classified material to WikiLeaks – Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks activits who is also a member of Iceland’s parliament, and computer programmers Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch citizen, and Jacob Appelbaum, an American.

The case goes to the heart of the larger debate about WikiLeaks itself and whether the site’s disclosing of thousands of classsified government documents was free speech or a violation of national security. A judge ordered Twitter to turn over the information in a Dec. 14 ruling.

Jonsdottir, Gonggrijp and Appelbaum were represented by three defense lawyers, including one from the American Civil Liberties Union, in Tuesday’s hearing.

Read the rest at the Washington Post…and more from the Guardian and NY Times.

Also, Harvard Law professor and civil liberties lawyer Alan Dershowitz is now advising Julian Assange and WikiLeaks in their brewing legal battle with the DOJ. He has won 13 out of the 15 murder and attempted murder cases that he has worked on, and is probably best known for his roles in the OJ Simpson and Pentagon papers cases.