jaymzru - Slashdot User

Google Ads Are a Free Speech Issue 148

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @08:56AM from the free-as-in-not-speaking dept.

WebHostingGuy writes "A US Federal Court recently ruled that ads displayed by search engines are protected as free speech. In the case at issue, Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft were sued by an individual demanding under the 14th Amendment that the search engines display his advertisements concerning fraud in North Carolina. The Court flatly stated that the search engines were exercising their First Amendment right of free speech in deciding what ads they want to display."

Submission + - Ars.Technica Examines BitTorrent Video Store

Submitted by Rocketship Underpant on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @08:51AM

Rocketship Underpant writes: Ars Technica has given the new DRM-based BitTorrent video store a test drive. For those who may not know, the BitTorrent name is following in the footsteps of Napster, using its name to pursue non-free media distribution. But while Napster had nothing in common with its filesharing precursor, BitTorrent does use the bit-torrent protocol for distributing videos.

So does the new BitTorrent store work? "Store" may be an exaggeration; while it was (mostly) capable of taking the reviewer's money, none of the first few videos that were downloaded would play. Unsurprisingly, DRM is the source of the problem. Windows Media Player experienced numerous problems trying to read and authenticate the videos, even though it is the only supported player. In the reviewer's opinion, the service of the BitTorrent store is unacceptable. What's more, even files that work are rendered practically useless by the restrictive BitTorrent DRM, as the video cannot be burned to DVD or played on other devices.

Submission + - Boycott the RIAA in March

Submitted by Barrien on Wednesday February 28, 2007 @08:50AM

Barrien writes: The guys over at Gizmodo have declared a boycott of the RIAA during the month of March. They are not advocating piracy, instead they suggest buying non-signed artist's music, or music that is available online. The full scoop can be found on their webpage, or here's a direct link to their plan. This is how we make our stand against the monster that is the RIAA.

Submission + - ICANN to Become Internet's "Word Police"

Submitted by

Amanda B. Reckonwith

on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @11:47PM

Amanda B. Reckonwith writes: "ICANN to Become Internet's "Word Police" Top-Level Domain Policy to Bypass National Sovereignty and Free Speech Civil Society Proposes Amendment to Protect Civil Liberties and Innovation ICANN's Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) submitted a proposal to protect freedom of expression and innovation in the introduction of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). ICANN's policy council, the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), is currently developing policy recommendations to regulate the introduction of new top-level domain names on the Internet. NCUC is troubled by the GNSO's draft recommendation to create string selection criteria that would prevent the registration of a new gTLD string that contains a controversial word or idea. In the 13 February 2007 GNSO draft report, proposed Term of Reference 2(v) of the string criteria states that "the string should not be contrary to public policy (as set out in advice from the Governmental Advisory Committee)". According to the GAC guidelines: "No new gTLD string shall promote hatred, racism, discrimination of any sort, criminal activity, or any abuse of specific religions or cultures. ... If the GAC or individual GAC members express formal concerns about a specific new gTLD application, ICANN should defer from proceeding with the said application until GAC concerns have been addressed to the GAC's or the respective government's satisfaction." Unless reformed, this ICANN policy will prevent anyone in the world from being able to use controversial words like "abortion" or "gay" in a new gTLD if a single country objects to their use. The proposal would further prevent the use of numerous ordinary words like "herb" and "john" in a string since they can have an illegal connotation in certain contexts. In addition to any country in the world being able to stop a new gTLD string, ICANN staff would also be able to prevent any idea that it deemed too controversial to exist in the new domain space. The 13 Feb. proposal (Term of Reference 2(x)) gives ICANN staff the important job of making preliminary determinations as to whether a string is inappropriate and who the "legitimate sponsor" of a domain name (such as .god) should be. "The 13 Feb proposal would essentially make ICANN the arbiter of public policy and morality in the new gTLD space, a frightening prospect for anyone who cares about democracy and free expression," said Robin Gross, Executive Director of IP Justice, an NCUC member organization. "The proposal would give ICANN enormous power to regulate the use of language on the Internet and lead to massive censorship of controversial ideas." NCUC proposes to amend the GNSO draft policy so that only the legal restrictions in the national jurisdictions of the string application in question will apply to the particular string. Under NCUC's proposal, national law would be the measure for what words are permitted to be registered in any particular nation, not ICANN policy. NCUC's proposal recognizes the reality that there are competing standards of morality and competing public policy objectives and that ICANN should not try to set a universal standard. NCUC's amendment better protects freedom of expression, since only those words and ideas that are actually outlawed in a particular nation could not be registered in that nation. Instead of engaging in censorship in the new domain space, ICANN policy should respect international freedom of expression guarantees. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees that "everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." ICANN should adhere to the principles of Article 19 and permit the registration of lawful, but controversial strings in the new gTLD space. Besides free expression, NCUC's proposal also protects national sovereignty, and the right of nations, not ICANN, to decide what words may be used in their jurisdictions. The current draft report would usurp the right of an individual nation to permit the use of words in its own country that are controversial in other countries. Rather than blanketly applying 240 nations' cumulative restrictions on speech onto every country, NCUC's proposal is more narrowly tailored to limit only those words that are actually illegal where registered. Milton Mueller, Professor at Syracuse University School of Information Studies and NCUC Executive Committee member said, "There has always been a danger that ICANN's exclusive control of Internet identifiers would be used as leverage to enforce extraneous policies. ICANN needs to stick to its narrow, technical coordination role, We need to protect the Internet from globalized, centralized regulation." The current GNSO proposal is further flawed because it is framed from an irrelevant 1883 treaty on trademarks that is inappropriate, both because of its archaic origin and because trademark law is intrinsically a narrow legal paradigm that does not extend to a full vision of societal benefits and rights. Most notably, trademark law is not designed to regulate non-commercial speech, which is vast majority of online communication. NCUC's proposal to amend Term of Reference 2 (v) is the main proposal in a group of 5 NCUC proposals to reform the policy recommendations in the 13 Feb. GNSO draft report. It is possible that ICANN's GNSO Policy Council will vote on draft final report as soon as the next ICANN board meeting in Lisbon in late March 2007. NCUC urges individuals and organizations that are concerned with protecting free expression and innovation to contact ICANN Board Members and their national representative of the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) to express their concerns about the current draft and support for NCUC's amendments. If you live in the United States, your representative on the GAC is Suzanne Sene from the US Commerce Department. Suzanne Sene can be contacted via email to SSene[at]ntia.doc.gov The ICANN GAC representatives from other countries are listed here: http://gac.icann.org/web/contact/reps/index.shtml The ICANN Board of Directors is listed here: http://www.icann.org/general/board.html Links to relevant documents: GNSO Draft Final Report on the Introduction of New Generic Top-Level Domains: http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/GNSO-PDP-Dec05-FR13-F EB07.htm NCUC proposal (Feb. 2007) to amend the draft report: http://www.ipjustice.org/ICANN/drafts/022207.html NCUC Comments on Fall 2006 Draft Report http://www.ipjustice.org/ICANN/NCUC_Comments_on_Ne w_gTLDs.pdf Internet Governance Project Alert: "Will the UN Take Over the Internet" Through ICANN? http://internetgovernance.org/news.html#UNTakeOver InternetThroughIcann_022207 GNSO Council Webpage on Intro of New gTLD Policy: http://gnso.icann.org/issues/new-gtlds/ About the NCUC: The Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) is the part of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that represents the interests of noncommercial Internet users. NCUC is a voting member of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), which develops policy and advises the ICANN Board on matters regarding generic top-level domains on the Internet. NCUC develops and supports Internet policies that favor noncommercial use on the Internet. The NCUC is made up of 40 civil society organizations from around the world and maintains a website at http://www.ncdnhc.org/ ."

Submission + - Legal Battle For AACS Begins

Submitted by henrypijames on Tuesday February 27, 2007 @11:14PM

henrypijames writes: As widely expected, the MPAA has learned nothing from the debacle of its failed prosecution against DVD Jon (of DeCSS) and is now releasing its army of lawyers to fight against the circumvention of AACS (the successor of CSS): Upon the reception of a DMCA takedown notice, SourceForge has immediately terminated its hosting of BackupHDDVD (a tool to backup HD DVD movies, as its suggestes). The project leader is seeking advice on how to proceed.

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