Ramanisblog

Tag: freedom of expression

  • SOPA-Senseless.Web page under SOPA and Text of the Bill..

    World wide web
    Image via Wikipedia

    Stop On-line Piracy Act is , to say the least is idiotic ,impractical and seems to have been designed at the behest of Corporations to safeguard their interests.

    SOPA is impractical as it is not possible to differentiate between original content and the pirated one, short of blocking the sites.

    Blocking of sites on the basis of perceived copy right issues is difficult as even Quotes from the original will be closed down.

    Those who really infringe copy right act will continue to go about under the guise of ‘quoting’

    It is all a question of interpretation.

    Being impractical ,it becomes idiotic.

    Do Shakespeare,History Books ,Text Books,Literature,Science papers of general importance,even for that matter News…qualify to be called Copy Righted?

    While the Corporations manoeuvre  to have the bill passed, what is at stake is the individual Freedom of Expression.

    Wiki leaks,Wikipedia,Wired.com,Reddit, Firefox are among others of the internet community to take the fight to the Capitol Hill.

    Time that this non sense is put an end to protect freedom of Expression,fie the greedy corporations,whose perceived losses on account of Online piracy is a pittance compared with the astronomical profits they have.

    Care must be excised to avoid piracy as it amounts to eating what one has spit out.”

    See the Link as to how the web will look like  if the SPOA comes into force.

    I suggest, instead of  closing sites to show our disapproval,we write more, say 5 pieces per Blogger on SOPA, to register out protest, signifying that Word can not be suppressed.

    “http://thehackernews.com/2012/01/indian-bjp-politicians-bank-accounts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheHackersNews+%28The+Hackers+News+-+Daily+Cyber+News+Updates%29

    When the powerful world of old media mobilized to win passage of an online antipiracy bill, it marshaled the reliable giants of K Street — the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Recording Industry Association of America and, of course, the motion picture lobby, with its new chairman, former SenatorChristopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat and an insider’s insider.

    Yet on Wednesday this formidable old guard was forced to make way for the new as Web powerhouses backed by Internet activists rallied opposition to the legislation through Internet blackouts and cascading criticism, sending an unmistakable message to lawmakers grappling with new media issues: Don’t mess with the Internet.

    As a result, the legislative battle over two once-obscure bills to combat the piracy of American movies, music, books and writing on the World Wide Web may prove to be a turning point for the way business is done in Washington. It represented a moment when the new economy rose up against the old.

    “I think it is an important moment in the Capitol,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and an important opponent of the legislation. “Too often, legislation is about competing business interests. This is way beyond that. This is individual citizens rising up.”

    It appeared by Wednesday evening that Congress would follow Bank of America, Netflix and Verizon as the latest institution to change course in the face of a netizen revolt.

    Legislation that just weeks ago had overwhelming bipartisan support and had provoked little scrutiny generated a grass-roots coalition on the left and the right. Wikipedia made its English-language content unavailable, replaced with a warning: “Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet.” Visitors to Reddit found the site offline in protest. Google’s home page was scarred by a black swatch that covered the search engine’s label.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/technology/web-protests-piracy-bill-and-2-key-senators-change-course.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

    SOPA Text.

    ”

    H.R.3261

    Stop Online Piracy Act (Introduced in House – IH)

    SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS.

      (a) Short Title- This Act may be cited as the `Stop Online Piracy Act’.
      (b) Table of Contents- The table of contents of this Act is as follows:
      Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents.
      Sec. 2. Savings and severability clauses.

    TITLE I–COMBATING ONLINE PIRACY

      Sec. 101. Definitions.
      Sec. 102. Action by Attorney General to protect U.S. customers and prevent U.S. support of foreign infringing sites.
      Sec. 103. Market-based system to protect U.S. customers and prevent U.S. funding of sites dedicated to theft of U.S. property.
      Sec. 104. Immunity for taking voluntary action against sites dedicated to theft of U.S. property.
      Sec. 105. Immunity for taking voluntary action against sites that endanger public health.
      Sec. 106. Guidelines and study.
      Sec. 107. Denying U.S. capital to notorious foreign infringers.

    TITLE II–ADDITIONAL ENHANCEMENTS TO COMBAT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEFT

      Sec. 201. Streaming of copyrighted works in violation of criminal law.
      Sec. 202. Trafficking in inherently dangerous goods or services.
      Sec. 203. Protecting U.S. businesses from foreign and economic espionage.
      Sec. 204. Amendments to sentencing guidelines.
      Sec. 205. Defending intellectual property rights abroad.

    SEC. 2. SAVINGS AND SEVERABILITY CLAUSES.

      (a) Savings Clauses-
      (1) FIRST AMENDMENT- Nothing in this Act shall be construed to impose a prior restraint on free speech or the press protected under the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.
      (2) TITLE 17 LIABILITY- Nothing in title I shall be construed to enlarge or diminish liability, including vicarious or contributory liability, for any cause of action available under title 17, United States Code, including any limitations on liability under such title.
      (b) Severability- If any provision of this Act, or the application of the provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be unconstitutional, the other provisions or the application of the provision to other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.

    TITLE I–COMBATING ONLINE PIRACY

    SEC. 101. DEFINITIONS.

      In this title:
      (1) DOMAIN NAME- The term `domain name’ has the meaning given that term in section 45 of the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. 1127) and includes any subdomain designation using such domain name as part of an electronic address on the Internet to identify a unique online location.
      (2) DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM SERVER- The term `domain name system server’ means a server or other mechanism used to provide the Internet protocol address associated with a domain name.
      (3) DOMESTIC DOMAIN NAME- The term `domestic domain name’ means a domain name that is registered or assigned by a domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority, that is located within a judicial district of the United States.
      (4) DOMESTIC INTERNET PROTOCOL ADDRESS- The term `domestic Internet Protocol address’ means an Internet Protocol address for which the corresponding Internet Protocol allocation entity is located within a judicial district of the United States.
      (5) DOMESTIC INTERNET SITE- The term `domestic Internet site’ means an Internet site for which the corresponding domain name or, if there is no domain name, the corresponding Internet Protocol address, is a domestic domain name or domestic Internet Protocol address.
      (6) FOREIGN DOMAIN NAME- The term `foreign domain name’ means a domain name that is not a domestic domain name.
      (7) FOREIGN INTERNET PROTOCOL ADDRESS- The term `foreign Internet Protocol address’ means an Internet Protocol address that is not a domestic Internet protocol address.
      (8) FOREIGN INTERNET SITE- The term `foreign Internet site’ means an Internet site that is not a domestic Internet site.
      (9) INCLUDING- The term `including’ means including, but not limited to.
      (10) INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ENFORCEMENT COORDINATOR- The term `Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator’ means the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator appointed under section 301 of the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 (15 U.S.C. 8111).
      (11) INTERNET- The term `Internet’ has the meaning given that term in section 5362(5) of title 31, United States Code.
      (12) INTERNET ADVERTISING SERVICE- The term `Internet advertising service’ means a service that for compensation sells, purchases, brokers, serves, inserts, verifies, clears, or otherwise facilitates the placement of an advertisement, including a paid or sponsored search result, link, or placement, that is rendered in viewable form for any period of time on an Internet site.
      (13) INTERNET PROTOCOL- The term `Internet Protocol’ means a protocol used for communicating data across a packet-switched internetwork using the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, and includes any predecessor or successor protocol to such protocol.
      (14) INTERNET PROTOCOL ADDRESS- The term `Internet Protocol address’ means a numerical label that is assigned to each device that participates in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.
      (15) INTERNET PROTOCOL ALLOCATION ENTITY- The term `Internet Protocol allocation entity’ means, with respect to a particular Internet Protocol address, the entity, local internet registry, or regional internet registry to which the smallest applicable block of Internet Protocol addresses containing that address is allocated or assigned by a local internet registry, regional internet registry, or other Internet Protocol address allocation authority, according to the applicable publicly available database of allocations and assignments, if any.
      (16) INTERNET SEARCH ENGINE- The term `Internet search engine’ means a service made available via the Internet that searches, crawls, categorizes, or indexes information or Web sites available elsewhere on the Internet and on the basis of a user query or selection that consists of terms, concepts, categories, questions, or other data returns to the user a means, such as a hyperlinked list of Uniform Resource Locators, of locating, viewing, or downloading such information or data available on the Internet relating to such query or selection.
      (17) INTERNET SITE- The term `Internet site’ means the collection of digital assets, including links, indexes, or pointers to digital assets, accessible through the Internet that are addressed relative to a common domain name or, if there is no domain name, a common Internet Protocol address.
      (18) LANHAM ACT- The term `Lanham Act’ means the Act entitled `An Act to provide for the registration and protection of trademarks used in commerce, to carry out the provisions of certain international conventions, and for other purposes’, approved July 5, 1946 (commonly referred to as the `Trademark Act of 1946′ or the `Lanham Act’).
      (19) NONAUTHORITATIVE DOMAIN NAME SERVER- The term `nonauthoritative domain name server’ means a server that does not contain complete copies of domains but uses a cache file that is comprised of previous domain name server lookups, for which the server has received an authoritative response in the past.
      (20) OWNER; OPERATOR- The terms `owner’ or `operator’, when used in connection with an Internet site, includes, respectively, any owner of a majority interest in, or any person with authority to operate, such Internet site.
      (21) PAYMENT NETWORK PROVIDER-
      (A) IN GENERAL- The term `payment network provider’ means an entity that directly or indirectly provides the proprietary services, infrastructure, and software to effect or facilitate a debit, credit, or other payment transaction.
      (B) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION- For purposes of this paragraph, a depository institution (as such term is defined under section 3 of the Federal Deposit Insurance Act) or credit union that initiates a payment transaction shall not be construed to be a payment network provider based solely on the offering or provision of such service.
      (22) SERVICE PROVIDER- The term `service provider’ means a service provider as defined in section 512(k)(1) of title 17, United States Code, that operates a nonauthoritative domain name system server.
      (23) U.S.-DIRECTED SITE- The term `U.S.-directed site’ means an Internet site or portion thereof that is used to conduct business directed to residents of the United States, or that otherwise demonstrates the existence of minimum contacts sufficient for the exercise of personal jurisdiction over the owner or operator of the Internet site consistent with the Constitution of the United States, based on relevant evidence that may include whether–
      (A) the Internet site is used to provide goods or services to users located in the United States;
      (B) there is evidence that the Internet site or portion thereof is intended to offer or provide–
      (i) such goods and services,
      (ii) access to such goods and services, or
      (iii) delivery of such goods and services,
      to users located in the United States;
      (C) the Internet site or portion thereof does not contain reasonable measures to prevent such goods and services from being obtained in or delivered to the United States; and
      (D) any prices for goods and services are indicated or billed in the currency of the United States.
      (24) UNITED STATES- The term `United States’ includes any commonwealth, possession, or territory of the United States

    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c112:1:./temp/~c112s5p8Nc:e1014:

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  • Pakistan Site deletes Account for Blogging on Pakistan Cricket !?

    I came across the site’http://www.pakpassion.net/‘

    It seemed to be a discussion cum informative Forum to get a ring side view of oakistan cricket.

    I created an account to day and was accepted as a member.

    I found the piece on Pakistan‘s 2010 World Cup interesting.

    So I blogged the piece with  my comments this morning as follows.

    My comment in the Blog.

    With out all this, it is not a Pakistani Team.

    Immensely talented ,it is wasted.

    Then I reproduced the story with Link to the site.

    http://ramanisblog.in/2011/04/05/indisciplinefightsmole-in-pakistan-2011-world-cup-team/

    Within three hours I received an email from them

    ‘

    from PakPassion – Pakistan Cricket Forum<pakpassion@hotmail.com>
    sender-time Sent at 6:04 PM (GMT-05:00). Current time there: 11:38 AM. ✆
    to ramanan50@gmail.com
    date Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 6:04 PM
    subject Account removed at PakPassion – Pakistan Cricket Forum!
    Dear ramanan50, 

    Unfortunately your registration at PakPassion – Pakistan Cricket Forum did not meet our membership requirements. Therefore your registration was deleted.

    Sorry,
    PakPassion – Pakistan Cricket Forum

    This is the Freedom,nay Media Freedom which is 100% better than India Afridi spoke about.
    probably they have read my Blog on Afridi

    Indians Not largehearted.- You are Right Afridi.Video.


  • Indian Govt proposal to muzzle bloggers-Respond.

    Government is probably irked by Bloggers coverage of CWG Scam,2G,Radia Tapes,ISRO affairs.
    Going  Tinpot Dictators’ way?
    Bloggers in and from India should put a stop to this non sense.
    Forward your views .
    We shall pettiton first The President India( hope she remembers she is the President)
    Simultaneously ,represent to Human Rights organization and International Civil Rights Groups.
    NEW DELHI: A government proposal seeking to police blogs has come in for severe criticism from legal experts and outraged the online community. The draft rules, drawn up by the government under the Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008, deal with due diligence to be observed by an intermediary. 

    Under the Act, an ‘intermediary’ is defined as any entity which on behalf of another receives, stores or transmits any electronic record. Hence, telecom networks, web-hosting and internet service providers, search engines, online payment and auction sites as well as cyber cafes are identified as intermediaries. The draft has strangely included bloggers in the category of intermediaries, setting off the online outcry.

    Blogs are clubbed with network service providers as most of them facilitate comment and online discussion and preserve the traffic as an electronic record, but equating them with other intermediaries is like comparing apples with oranges, says Pavan Duggal, advocate in the Supreme Court and an eminent cyber law expert.

    ‘This will curtail the freedom of expression of individual bloggers because as an intermediary they will become responsible for the readers’ comments. It technically means that any comment or a reader-posted link on a blog which according to the government is threatening, abusive, objectionable, defamatory, vulgar, racial, among other omnibus categories, will now be considered as the legal responsibility of the blogger,” he explains.

    Even Google, the host of Blogger, among India’s most popular blogging sites, expressed displeasure at the proposal. “Blogs are platforms that empower people to communicate with one another, and we don’t believe that an internet middlemen should be held unreasonably liable for content posted by users,” a spokesperson told TOI.

    Blogs, which are typically maintained and updated by individuals, have showcased their political importance in recent times and the internet community views these rules as a lopsided attempt to curtail an individual’s right to expression.

    If individual blogs are an intermediary, then why can’t Facebook and Twitter also be classified as such, as they too receive, store and transmit electronic records and facilitate online discussions,” retorts the spokesperson of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a Bangalore-based organization, which works on digital pluralism. “These rules will not only bring bloggers and the ISP provider on the same platform, but the due diligence clause will also result in higher power of censorship to the larger player. Imagine your ISP provider blocking your blog because it finds that certain user-comments fit these omnibus terms,” the CIS spokesperson added.

    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Govt-proposal-to-muzzle-bloggers-sparks-outcry/articleshow/7668026.cms

  • Court to review employer access to worker messages

    Even if the court decides in favor of the employees, the Employers can still get the transcript from the service providers for a fee. Please read my blog on this for details.
    There is no privacy in the Cyber world or mobile phones.
    Coming to the specific issue the employer has every right to call for details as the mails are from the company’s account.
    WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Monday it will decide how much privacy workers have when they send text messages from company accounts.

    The justices said they will review a federal appeals court ruling that sided with Ontario, Calif., police officers who complained that the department improperly snooped on their electronic exchanges. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco also faulted the text-messaging service for turning over transcripts of the messages without the officers’ consent.

    Users of text-messaging services “have a reasonable expectation of privacy” regarding messages stored on the service provider’s network, 9th Circuit Judge Kim Wardlaw said. Both the city and USA Mobility Wireless, Inc., which bought the text-messaging service involved in the case, appealed the 9th Circuit ruling.

    The justices turned down the company’s appeal, but said they would hear arguments in the spring in the city’s case.

    The appeals court ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Ontario police Sgt. Jeff Quon and three others after Arch Wireless gave their department transcripts of Quon’s text messages in 2002. Police officials read the messages to determine whether department-issued pagers were being used solely for work purposes.

    The city said it discovered that Quon sent and received hundreds of personal messages, including many that were sexually explicit.

    Quon and the others said the police force had an informal policy of not monitoring the usage as long as employees paid for messages in excess of monthly character limits.

    The case is City of Ontario v. Quon, 08-1332.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121401215.html?hpid=topnews

  • Yahoo, Verizon: Our Spy Capabilities Would ‘Shock’, ‘Confuse’ Consumers

    Very disturbing.If they can sell details to Government, they might already be selling to third parties.
    Story:
    Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies?

    That’s the question muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed a few months ago. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public.

    Yahoo writes in its 12-page objection letter (.pdf), that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.”

    “Therefore, release of Yahoo!’s information is reasonably likely to lead to impairment of its reputation for protection of user privacy and security, which is a competitive disadvantage for technology companies,” the company writes.

    Verizon took a different stance. It objected to the release (.pdf) of its Law Enforcement Legal Compliance Guide because it might “confuse” customers and lead them to think that records and surveillance capabilities available only to law enforcement would be available to them as well — resulting in a flood of customer calls to the company asking for trap and trace orders.

    “Customers may see a listing of records, information or assistance that is available only to law enforcement,” Verizon writes in its letter, “but call in to Verizon and seek those same services. Such calls would stretch limited resources, especially those that are reserved only for law enforcement emergencies.”

    Other customers, upon seeing the types of surveillance law enforcement can do, might “become unnecessarily afraid that their lines have been tapped or call Verizon to ask if their lines are tapped (a question we cannot answer).”

    Verizon does disclose a little tidbit in its letter, saying that the company receives “tens of thousands” of requests annually for customer records and information from law enforcement agencies.

    Soghoian filed his records request to discover how much law enforcement agencies — and thus U.S. taxpayers — are paying for spy documents and surveillance services with the aim of trying to deduce from this how often such requests are being made. Soghoian explained his theory on his blog, Slight Paranoia:

    In the summer of 2009, I decided to try and follow the money trail in order to determine how often Internet firms were disclosing their customers’ private information to the government. I theorized that if I could obtain the price lists of each ISP, detailing the price for each kind of service, and invoices paid by the various parts of the Federal government, then I might be able to reverse engineer some approximate statistics. In order to obtain these documents, I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with every part of the Department of Justice that I could think of.

    The first DoJ agency to respond to his request was the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), which indicated that it had price lists available for Cox Communications, Comcast, Yahoo and Verizon. But because the companies voluntarily provided the price lists to the government, the FOIA allows the companies an opportunity to object to the disclosure of their data under various exemptions. Comcast and Cox were fine with the disclosure, Soghoian reported.

    He found that Cox Communications charges $2,500 to fulfill a pen register/trap-and-trace order for 60 days, and $2,000 for each additional 60-day-interval. It charges $3,500 for the first 30 days of a wiretap, and $2,500 for each additional 30 days. Thirty days worth of a customer’s call detail records costs $40.

    Comcast’s pricing list, which was already leaked to the internet in 2007, indicated that it charges at least $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap, and $750 per month thereafter.

    But Verizon and Yahoo took offense at the request.

    Yahoo objected on grounds that its pricing constituted “confidential commercial information” and cited Exemption 4 of the Freedom of Information Act and the Trade Secrets Act.

    Exemption 4 of the FOIA refers to the disclosure of commercial or financial information that could result in a competitive disadvantage to the company if it were publicly disclosed. The company claims its pricing is derived from labor rates for employees and overhead and, therefore, disclosing the information would provide clues to its operating costs — regardless of whether these same clues are already available in public records, such as those the company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also claims that since Soghoian is trying to determine the actual amounts the Marshals Service paid Yahoo for responding to requests, the price lists are irrelevant, since “there are no standard prices for these transactions.”

    But equally important to Yahoo’s objections was the potential for “criticism” and ridicule. Yahoo quoted Soghoian on his blog writing that his aim was to “use this blog to shame the corporations that continue to do harm to user online privacy.”

    Yahoo also objected to the disclosure of its letter objecting to the disclosure of pricing information saying that “release of this letter would likely cause substantial competitive harm” to the company. The company added, in a veiled threat, that if the Marshals Service were to show anyone its letter objecting to the disclosure of pricing information, it could “impair the government’s ability to obtain information necessary for making appropriate decisions with regard to future FOIA requests.”

    If anyone out there has a copy of Verizon or Yahoo’s law enforcement pricing list and wants to share it, feel free to use our anonymous tip address.

    http://digg.com/d31BZbH