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MediaFire Not Too Happy About Skipscreen Firefox Add-on

Ryan Whitwam — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:05:17 -0500

Developers of the Firefox Add-on, SkipScreen, had a bit of a rude awakening recently when Mozilla said they’d received a takedown request. The request was made by file hosting site, MediaFire. They claimed that SkipScreen violated their terms of use. To their credit, Mozilla asked the SkipScreen devs to respond before they’d pull the add-on down. Mediafire contends that SkipScreen “bypasses the MediaFire website and steals costly bandwidth”. They also claimed that SkipScreen displays content from other pages.

SkipScreen allows users to bypass the tedious wait times on sharing sites like MediaFire and Rapidshare. This ingenious little add-on will automatically click through whatever hoops necessary to get to the actual download page. Then it will extract and execute the code for the download link. This is how it bypasses those screens that force you to wait ‘X’ seconds, unless you register.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote SkipScreen’s response. They rightly pointed out that the add-on doesn’t technically bypass any screens. It just automates the process of finding a download link. The EFF also pointed out that SkipScreen does not present content from another site. MediaFire has probably just brought more attention to SkipScreen by going through with this complaint. Apparently, they’ve never heard of the Streisand Effect. So… the add-on is still available on the Mozilla site, get it here.

MPAA Throws a Fit at EFF Over Real DVD Lawsuit Statement

Alex Castle — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:25:28 -0500

Monday, the MPAA posted an open letter to the EFF titled “Hollywood isn’t Living in the Past, EFF Shouldn’t Either.” The testily-titled missive contains the association’s responses to claims that its actions against the RealDVD DVD burning software are an attempt to maintain control over technology and innovation.

In the most pointed paragraph of the letter, the MPAA’s Jeff Williams writes:

“Forgive us if we take offense when the EFF and other activist organizations that continually take the side of those who profit from widespread copyright infringement attack our industry as one that stifles innovation. It's a desperate throw-back to the Napster days of old when they pull out this tired and weathered playbook. It's not 2001 anymore.”

The letter also argues that Hollywood and the internet are no longer at odds, and that legal services like iTunes and Hulu represent ways in which the industry is embracing innovation.

What do you think? Is the MPAA right to say that “The days of Hollywood being from Mars and Silicon Valley being from Venus are simply over?” Hit the jump and let us know.

Image Credit: Real

Copywriting Wrongs

Quinn Norton — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:00:00 -0500

With a presidential election around the corner, let’s look at how people pervert copyright law to squelch speech. Copyright takedown notices were never meant to stifle whistle-blowers or detractors, yet that’s become a popular use for them. Individual critics are likely to go broke even if they win a case, so people and ISPs tend to back down at lawyer point.

One of the most repugnant misuses of the takedown notice was by Diebold, a maker of electronic voting machines. Diebold responded to allegations of security flaws with an “Oh no, our machines are fine! Move along!” type of response. But leaked internal Diebold documentation posted on the net confirmed the company knew it was p0wned. Diebold couldn’t deny anything—instead it demanded the documentation be taken offline, on the basis of copyright infringement. According to the EFF, Diebold failed to pass “the giggle test” on that case.

Nobody loves its copyrights and hates its former members like the Church of Scientology. It makes the RIAA look like an amateur when it comes to suing the hell out of its critics, anywhere, anytime. The Church of Scientology has been at it the longest, too. When there’s no legitimate way to gag your critics, you’re down to sending a cease-and-desist letter or hiring a team of ninjas to take them out. The former is a lot cheaper. Even if the latter is more fun.

It goes on... the Jehovah’s Witnesses shutting down a critical website, the rapper Akon trying to shut up conservative pundit Michelle Malkin, etc.

My personal favorite is radio personality Michael Savage. Savage made some comments about Islam on his radio show that were, shall we say, colorful. The nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) posted these comments on its site to highlight his bigotry. So Savage sued for copyright infringement. At no point did he actually try to defend his comments, he just tried to hit CAIR over the head with a big lawyer and intimidate the group into silence. In this case, the EFF stepped in and hit him back.

But it’s such a weak way to shut people up. If you really want to oppress someone, I say get the ninjas.

Quinn Norton writes about copyright for Wired News and other publications. Her work has ranged from legal journalism to the inner life of pirate organizations.

Ruling to Expose Your YouTube Viewing Habits

Chris Moody — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:08:06 -0500

Have you been uploading copyright protected content on YouTube? Have you even been looking at it? Viacom wants to know, and a Judge has ruled in the recent Viacom v. Google case that Google has to turn over “all data from the Logging database concerning each time a YouTube video has been viewed on the YouTube website or through embedding on a third-party website”.

Kurt Opsahl with the Electronic Frontier Foundation disagrees with the courts ruling arguing that the court, “erroneously ignores the protections of the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), and threatens to expose deeply private information about what videos are watched by YouTube users”. The VPPA was passed in 1988 as a result of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental history being published during his Supreme Court nomination.

I agree with Opsahl, someone’s YouTube history should be just as private as their video rental history. Privacy is harder and harder to maintain in a world where technology is outstripping existing laws, which often must be judged by people with little experience in technology. We certainly don’t need which version of Star Wars Kid we were watching to be available for anyone to look at, or for companies to go trolling for lawsuits in data. Where do you come down on the issue?

Immunity for Telecom Compliance in Warrantless Spying ?

Erin Simon — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:04:54 -0600

The Senate Judiciary Committee was supposed to vote today on a bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but the vote has been pushed back to next week to give lawmakers more time to consider proposed amendments. One of the key disputes is whether to grant immunity to the telephone and internet service providers who are accused of illegally participating in the NSA's warrantless surveillance programs. Immunity would end lawsuits by state public utility commissions and civil liberties groups (among them my former employer the Electronic Frontier Foundation) which charge the telecoms with turning over massive amounts of user data to the government in violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), among other laws. The government and the telecoms in those cases have thus far been unsuccessful in trying to get the cases thrown out on the grounds that the possible surveillance is a state secret, so now it appears the telecom lobbyists are trying to win in Washington instead.

I won't pretend to be neutral on this issue; I went to law school because I believe, in a fundamental and probably naïve way, in the rule of law. If you go to court and you lose, you shouldn't be able to buy yourself a get out of jail free card by donating to congressional reelection funds.

Mark Klein, the AT&T technician who blew the whistle on that company turning over millions of email and phone communications to the NSA, went to DC this week to make the same point directly to Congress. He told the Washington Post, "If they've done something massively illegal and unconstitutional -- well, they should suffer the consequences. It's not my place to feel bad for them. They made their bed, they have to lie in it. The ones who did [anything wrong], you can be sure, are high up in the company. Not the average Joes, who I enjoyed working with."

Instead of blanket immunity, some lawmakers are tossing around the idea of indemnification – the telecoms would still litigate the cases against them, but the government would pay any damages. Another compromise proposal would have the government substitute for the telecoms, stepping into their place in the lawsuits. Either of these proposals would permit the cases to continue, which would allow us the public to find out just how extensive the alleged surveillance was.

Fair Use in Filtering

Erin Simon — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 22:51:13 -0600

Several public-interest groups have come forward with a six-point plan to protect fair use in filtering for copyrighted material. These principles respond to media producers' call for comprehensive copyright filtering of user-generated content and Google's recent announcement that it will begin filtering Youtube videos for infringing material. The media companies would require filtering that would identify infringing material based on mechanical comparison to reference material provided by the media companies, and would block material that matched copyrighted content before it got online. Google's plan, by contrast, would identify matching material after it had been uploaded to the site, and would allow content owners to choose between having the material taken down or allowing it to remain up in exchange for a percentage of the page's ad revenue.

That poses a problem according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and others, who say it will stifle fair use. Fair use is the doctrine which allows some limited uses of copyrighted material, especially when the new use transforms the old material instead of serving as a replacement. Short excerpts of book reprinted in a book review for the purpose of criticism, for example, are fair use and don't require the copyright owner's permission. Just how much taking is a fair use, however, is dependent on the individual circumstances of each taking – so machine-filtering can't adequately account for it. To combat this, the groups' six-point plan calls for a “wide berth for transformative uses,” in which filtering would only be used to take down material which was an almost verbatim full copy of a copyrighted work. They also mandate notice to users whose material is flagged by the filters, along with the opportunity to contest the accusation and have the material restored to the service if mistakenly taken down. Since Google's is the only plan in operation right now, they've got the lead, and only time and lobbying will see whose principles make it to fruition.

Thumbnail source photo courtesy of joebeone.