1.
However, it may turn out that in a few months from now, not only that these bloggers may be blocked, but also the NY Post and any website linking to it in order to keep the Gag Order in tact. Theoretically, when Israel’s Censorship Bill comes into law, we may be all coerced into reading only websites the government decides we may read. Once an apparatus which enables the government to block websites will be installed, the uses may not be only to protect kids. This is the “Slippery Slope”.
2.
Unlike what Moshe Lador, the Attorney General, stated that the public interest is to leave the Gag Order in tact. However, he is wrong. The public interest will be hurt only if the publication of such evidence will cause false testimonies and collection of evidence; in this case, publishing the information in the NY Post did not do that.
3.
Will blocking the NY Post make these links disappear? The Information already leaked out, so it is in the public domain; no gag order, no warrant and no trial can make it go away; Leave it be.
Does this article on Slashdot mark an end to my worries? According to a new bill submitted by Chris Smith, U.S Based corporations would be subjected to criminal liability should they censor Internet content and limit freedom of speech (arstechnica article). The new bill requires U.S Corporations to adhere to a new kind of policy, both in regards to Privacy Policies and to Content-Filtering and requires search engines to submit to the U.S Government their “black lists” per country (which, as other critics may say, limits the Search Engines from free business).
However, during the last few months, I’ve been heading the blogger coalition against censorship, trying to block Amnon Cohen’s prop 892 (also, also). However, this bill may not mean an end to my worries, the proposed bill is to censor adult content: gambling, violence and nudity, these three are absent from the U.S definition of censorship; as their interest in Internet Freedom is limited not to free speech, but to democratic speech.
Img CC-BY-SA-NC MateOptMd
Whilst according to sec 203 of the bill, search engines cannot limit keywords (or have to explain why such keywords were blocked), section 204 only requests hosting services (defined also as: a company which “makes such data available via the Internet.”, i.e Cisco and such) and to provide URLs which were blocked from availability; the only requirement is that Israel shall be deemed as an Internet Restricting Country according to the bill, which requires the U.S President to declare it as such.
Moreover, once the U.S President decides to declare Israel as a Internet Restricting Country, U.S Corporations may not assist our service providers implementing the “Big Brother” act (see more); This means that most of our problems, as nationals seeking internet freedom, are dependent on such a statement by the Honorable Prez. However, since there is quite a wide discretion for his implementation of the act, we are in deep shit:
A foreign country shall be designated as an Internet-restricting country if the President determines that the government of the country is directly or indirectly responsible for a systematic pattern of substantial restrictions on Internet freedom during the preceding 1-year period.
This means that as long as the U.S needs Israel to monitor Middle East “Democracy”, we will be the only Middle Eastern Country with both Internet Access and Internet Restriction…
Theoretically, GroupTweet was the killer application which was meant to turn Twitter, the rising microapplication, from something small to a giant monster. Twitter, until now, was a micro-social-networking-site or a micro-blog. Twitter enabled any user to open a page where he can write up to 140 characters and pass his message to the nation.
Each person chose who to follow and who will follow him, so de-facto a social network was created from followers and followees.. GroupTweet came to supply Twitter with what Prologue was trying to enable, a short group blog for everyone to read
And how was it done? In order to use the service, you needed to open a new twitter account and add its details to GroupTweet; afterwards, any message sent to the account was publish as a micropost in twitter, a full group blog.
It’s quite a problem with the ‘Web 2.0′ standpoint which views web-based services as Applications. No one will ever install software on his computer without reading about it, knowing what it does or even hear about it. However, in the Web 2.0 Era, Installing an application requires only a click, so it seems natural to install everything to experiment (without knowing what the application does); We don’t ask ourselves whether the website collects private data, who is behind him or what it does anyway.
For example, most of useless Facebook applications which made Facebook alive, are there because Facebook’s architecture allows 3rd parties to withdraw private data and doesn’t require users to register 3rd party applications installed. In this situation, when it is so easy to install applications, privacy matters will appear; even in an application with the utmost good will, Facebook still passes private information to the application and it can utilize it prior to any users’ knowledge of what the application does.
Web 2.0 is a material dialectical perception: it allows any person to interact in the democratic discourse and create his own internet content; it also, like any technology, is quite dangerous when not used carefully. Like any saw, electrical appliance and stereo deserve an operating manual, so do Web 2.0 applications, even if they have shiny, big and simple buttons.
The Shin Bet decided, that due to the rare situation, it may act against a detainee and tell him that his family is imprisoned as well. (full Hebrew Report). The audacity that the Shin Bet exercised pressure over detainees with threats on their family members is no different than the “Neighbour Drill” which was deemed unconstitutional by the Israeli Supreme Court. The way that national security is being taken in Israel is: If it’s national security, it has to be for our behalf and we must do everything.
There is no reason to use a person’s family in order to extort information from him, not even if this is a ticking bomb. Using family members in order to extort information not only will cause false confessions, but also places the family members in the same danger we are trying to prevent; and as such, we are no different than the ones standing against us in this war. Democracy is the moral fiber which is both the enabler and the enablee of the democratic society.
Even though the Israeli Supreme court already acknowledged the right to collective punishment in Israel (HCJ 698/85 Dejeles v. Military Commander, HCJ 8575/03 Azadin v. The Military Commander, HCJ 610/89 Bachri v. The Military Commander), these decisions were since the court stated that sealing down suspects’ houses as a preventive measure and not as a punishment. However, the latest court decision, explaining why the Government may disconnect Gaza from electricity, (HCJ 9132/07 Albasiyouni v. The State of Israel where Hon. Justice Dorit Beinish said:
Indeed, in times of war, such as in this case, the civil population is stuck against it’s benefit and good to an area where fighting occurs, and it is the primary victim of the state of war, even when efforts are being made to reduce it’s damage. Even in the territory of the state of Israel, while terror attacks are taking place, the primary victim of this state of war is the Civil Population. However, In all relating to actions against Israel it is not a random or consequential damage, but frequent terror attacks targeted against the civil society and meant to hurt innocent civilians. This is the main difference between the state of Israel, a democratic country fighting for it’s life with the legal means, and to the fighting of the terror organisations against it “The state fights in the name of the law and in order to keep it. Terrorists fight while violating the law and against it. The war against terror is the Law’s fight as well against those who come against is
So are we better than terrorists or just dress better?
האם אנחנו באמת טובים מהפלשתינאים או רק לובשים בגדים נקיים יותר?
This story, like Ashley Alexandra Dupree’s story, has all the characteristics of a good internet story which raises the right questions. Max Mosely, the president of F1 Racing, was caught with his pants down when he was involved with a fetishist orgy dressed as a Nazi officer (for Jews like me, this may be a quite offending). Allegedly, a great case in Internet Law for law students which may have to face all the issues and details in the case, and above all, Mosely’s right for privacy. Publishing Mosely’s sex tape proves how perverted and peeping society we live in, whose perversions are no less offending than Mosely’s.
Indeed, it is quite hard to think of a harsher perversion than the one acted by Mosely as he was beating a group of women while dressed in Nazi uniform and they were dressed as prisoners in a death camp; The perversion is amazing, and I doubt if Mosely, which holds a small capital, could have used any tools to prevent the leak of this video to the public domain as both Scientologists did with Tom Cruise’s leaked video (by legal means) or like Muslims who tried to remove Geert Wilders‘ movie, Fitna, with less legal means by threatening the lives of publishers. It seems that maybe my understanding of “If you have money, you have justice” is incorrect when the acts are so extreme.
The big question is Who Framed Max Mosely. Meaning, that someone had to track him down and want to frame him. These things don’t just ‘pop up’ on the web but apparently it was someone who invaded Mosely’s privacy and paid good money to extract this tape. This is not User Generated Content per se but it might cost Mosely his career. But it’s not just his career on the line, but the question why do we spread things so quickly over the internet (just because we can).
I don’t want to justify Mosely’s Fetish, nor do I wish to legitimise it, but we need to stop and think, and not just in the Internetish manner, should we criticise these people..
Max Mosely might not be a good man, he had fetishist sex with hookers while he was dressed as a Nazi officer, and this is enough to put him in my black book. But would he have gotten to my black book without someone invading his privacy? These are the cases where one’s right for privacy is so important. Privacy is meant for people like Mosely to execute their perversions without being in the public eye (as long as those perversions are legal, of course), in a private place and with consenting adults.
No one should ask me how do I have my sex, thank god, and not one will get an answer if he’ll ask. But you have to understand that the real criminal here is the one who leaked the video and infringed Mosely’s secret, and he will have to pay.
In a surprising yet disturbing manner, Ashlee Alexandra Dupre’s myspae page is still online as to 12:45 today, a day after her public appearance. It isn’t certain, but i can assume that her music career will only benefit from this. The fact that she did not remove her myspace page may seem promising if you’re a record producer that’s willing to get the next American Idol.
For those who weren’t updated with the earthly news, Dupre was the high-end prostitute which uncovered NY Governor, Eliott Spitzer in a prostitution ring (or actually as a client of sex services). Spitzer resigned and will probably be charged with some kind of felony (not that i understand why customers of sex-services are criminals) and will also have to do lot of ‘explainig’ to his wife. (on the fact that Spitzer was exposed by the same wiretaps he advocated for during 2004 I shall post later on i guess). However, within a day’s work, like any other internet meme, Ashlee Alexandra Duprespread all over the net like a virus while being portrayed as an innocent starlet, sexy and progressive; the fact that she received money for sex services became, instantly, to a minor detail.
Dupre and Spitzer’s story contains all the characters for a good story: Sex, Politics, Internet and Music. The only question is how much was Dupre, which didn’t have a choice but to be dragged into this, had to be exposed for this story to become public? A few months ago i blogged about the problems with prohibiting publishing of photographs taken on public places following a disturbing bill by Yuval Steinitz. The idea was that the press cannot be prohibited from reporting, as the public needs to know.
Indeed, the public needs to know everying: it needs to know that the governor of New-York uses sex-services, it needs to know who the hooker that slept with him is, he also, g-dammit, needs to know what is the Governor’s penis size and whether he came all over her face, had anal sex with her or that she chewed on his scrotum since that’s the way he likes it (In case i wasn’t clear enough, I was being sarcastic)
Using sex services by two consenting adults should not be a felony; using sex services may not be different from going to therapy, having mental or health problems and using sex services may not be different from a person’s fidelity to his wife. It’s not that the media should not publish these things, but it’s that the media that should allow a person to gather relevant information about his leaders, and as long as prostitution is not a crime (and, apparently, it is in NY), there is no need to publish the prostitute’s name or the fact that the governor needed one.
I think the media needs to grow up. The media needs to move its focus from the gossip type of information and focus on what’s important: giving quality criticism on the government. Maybe Steinitz’s bill is not the right one, but the details and people need to have their considerations and stop with the big titles in order to sell more copies and advertisements.
By the order of the court, the formal Defendants 2-3, the Israeli ISPs, have blocked access to the Defendant’s website, Ynet, following it’s publication of slandering content claiming that Plaintiff engaged in sexual activity with a herd of sick sheep. The Publication, made by an anonymous commenter, was taken down. However, according to the plaintiff, a man with great reputation, the system’s internal architecture enables comments including slander, and therefore, until blocked, it must be shut down.
1.
This how a redundant article may appear in one of the Israeli News Sites in a year or so, after they do not go out against wrongfully decided court decisions such as OCR 3485/08 NM v. Eli Amar. The Decision, given two weeks ago and published today on Ynet determines that Israeli Internet Service Providers shall block access to a website enabling users to engage in file-sharing, since it, allegedly, provides likes to torrents. (See also, C 167/07 NMC v. Amar)
3.
And what is so problematic with the Court’s decision? first of all, it has no legal grounds (the decision itself was given like in the Wikileaks case, with the Defendant’s consent). Not the Israeli Copyright Order nor the civil torts act or the Copyright Act acknowledge an Injunction blocking Users from accessing a website in this level, as the users are not a party to the process nor is the ISP a hosting provider. The ISP is simply granting access to a website which only provides links for users to use in file sharing programs. The Users themselves chose to infringe copyright. (and until today no court decision was given claiming links to files stored elsewhere deem as liability for copyright infringement).
4.
The real problem is the problem cause. If until now we faced chosen censorship which enables voluntary censorship (meaning that we may chose to prevent blocking), this blocking is involuntary and absolute. Copyright infringing sites are first, of course, as their plaintiffs have financial interests here.
5.
[Unfortunately] there is no organisation claiming to block child pornography sites in the name of child protection nor is there any extreme Jewish group calling to block nazi websites. The real reason file sharing sites were first is the major financial gain from censoring it. Today it’s file sharing, tomorrow? all the internet ports of a file sharing websites.These are, unfortunately the great problems of the web
: Child pornography, gambling and copyright infringement. What do they have in common? we all know. The same people whose name would be hurt will seek injunctive relief later on, and slowly all the websites will be taken down Censorship may be obsolete, as there is no need for internet without free speech.
6. This is a fight for our freedom. This is my war.
As i previously noted, The Israeli Ultraorthodox Party Shas is making its steps towards passing an Internet Censorship Act in Israel. The Act, which was voted on the first vote (out of three, where between votes public hearings take place), mandates ISPs to block access to all adult content according to criteria determined by the Minister of Telecommunications (Currently Ariel Atias from Shas). The Bill, which has been noted as 892, for the bill number (an uncommon thing in Israel), allows Internet users to gain access to unfiltered Internet should the identify themselves as adults in means determined by the minister.
As I explained, these two requirements: ISP based filtering (and the consequential proxy filtering according to IP, blacklists and keywords) and Opt-Out censorship creating blacklists of adult content consumers deem this act as unconstitutional. (I wrote a detailed opinion in Hebrew explaining the unconstituality of the act, which was submitted to the Israeli Parliament). Major additional problems appear as we are disabling speech with Content Based Restrictions (which are subjected to Strict Scrutiny according to the courts). Other problems include the externalization of the ISPs filter costs on the customers (as they are not allowed to charge for filtering) and the antitrust implications of using one filter per ISP (and Israel has only three ISPs). However, there are plenty more implications on free speech and privacy and also goes against the EU Association agreement for free trade which Israel signed.
The major problem here is the Political pressure. Currently, the Ultraorthodox party is threatening to leave Ehud Olmert’s government if peace talks continue. However, to keep Shas in the government and get its consent for peace talks, PM Olmert has agreed to allocate 475M ILS for Shas related institutions (bribe) and to vote for the Censorship act. The current situation is that we also fear that in order to engage peace talks with Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, we shall have to censor the web like they do, ironically. The real irony is that Shas opposed an act by Alex Miller, stating that ISPs shall notify clients about the possibility of installing filters and guiding children toward safer web use.
Shas’ Parliament Members are extremely against freedom of creed and expression and have went against the Gay community, abortions and other basic freedoms. The fear now is that should we have Censored Internet, criterias determined by Shas shall mean no political freedom. This is an extreme risk for the Israeli Democracy and regional stability, as well as towards the HiTech Industry, which may be directly affected.
Raphael Fogel, who always writes with taste but doesn’t write too often, comments on the up and coming takeover: “The right step for Yahoo!, Microsoft, Facebook and all the rest is to waive Google’s spider, which rides their content and sucks their income, and coerce Google to share them in its future development of products. “It’s time to stop making money on our expense”, the market will say to google, “Speaking of open standards is good for a world where all of us share the revenues or to an ideal world of open source, but now we are united, we have the users, come and show us what you can bring for our package.”.”
2. A fight has already started on who will examine this merger or takeover, TheRegister reports that the FTC and the DoJ are still not certain who will examine the purchase; While the FTC is set to examine implications on the advertising market, the DoJ may have to examine antitrust implications, and this is all before the European Union had said its words. This purchase may be problematic since the first test would be whether the consumer will be hurt by the decrease in competition in the email, instant messaging, photo sharing and search market; meaning that the question would be whether Overture which sold search results and was purchased by Yahoo! may still bring better results than Google.
3.
But that’s not the only question. Would Microsoft be allowed to block Google’s crawlers and spiders from accessing its websites now that it controls a major share of the internet? as long as it controls its websites, it is the one with the right to index it. Think about the browser wars during the 1990s, where Microsoft’s bundling made her go into major antitrust investigations and even a Billion Dollar lawsuit from Netscape ending in a 750 Million Dollar settlement for killing Netscape.
4.
The next browser war is the war for the search itself. The non-kosher, but quick way, where Microsoft could win is to purchase as many user generated content websites as possible and block Google’s crawler. Most likely that this may work, as previous lawsuits asking crawlers to withhold indexing sites were filed, including Perfect10’s many attempts to claim that indexing itself is a copyright violation. Microsoft can, if it purchases most of the relevant content, to prohibit Google from Indexing. Unfair dealing is just a small issue here.
5. Think of a situation where Googling somethting may not give an accurate result on thge web: Flickr, Wordpress.com, Yahoo!Finance and even MySpace may not be indexed just to kill the competition. The same action will paralyse the search giant and create, on the same infrastructure, two completely different internets. This is a gloomy prophecy, which most likely will not happen, but if it will, it may kill the search giant within a few months.
6.
In a few weeks, should Microsoft wish, Google may find itself as the next Netscape. Google does not create content, only indexes it. And when the indexed sites fight, it won’t be able to fight back.
A Letter arrived to Wikimedia-Israel’s Offices, signed by a person who presented himself as Adv. Amir Shemesh, [representing - jk] Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak, my knowledge of the hebrew language did not allow me to comprehend the entire contents of the letter, but to the best of my understanding, the sentence: “My office will fight this phenomenon as instructed by my client if the article will not be removed or edited in a manner which will not harm the Rabbi”. and as a person’s will is his honor, I removed the article “Amnon Yitzhak and his conversation article from Wikipedia, and the public shall be satisfied by this information (…)
1.
The Hebrew Branch of Wikipaedia (or Wikipedia) was threatened that if the article describing a specific Rabbi will not be amended, legal proceedings shall be taken; This week has been a grave week for Freedom of Expression anyway as a blogger was threatened as well that if he will not remove a user generated comment, legal proceedings will follow [decent disclosure, I represent the blogger in this case]; The conclusion was quite simple, More and more small websites, blogs and non-profit operations are being threatened out of their freedom. The mean? using lawyers and threats of slander and defamation lawsuits. It was quite obvious that one day some aristocrat will be highly insulted from these chatters on blogs or wikipaedia and decide to pay his lawyers a few dollars in order to issue a letter ( (See also an enlightened though by Jordan Lewinsky)
2.
The honorable Rabbi’s request is no different than millions of requests from people who try to avoid negative feedback on the net. Of course, Wikipaedia is facing this problem differently : It’s quite complicated to explain, but it’s hard to understand how a court would find Wikipaedia liable in spite the recent legislation attempts by Israel Hason (and see Yuval Dror’s opinion). Wikipaedia is unique in a way where not only a greater public benefit exists from its operation, but every amendment is documented and logged in a way where any alleged defamator could be found, but even his IP address is visible to the public. Yitzhak’s threats were merely an apparatus of censorship where he could have initiated legal proceedings against the original writers, were there any defamatory statements.
3.
Wikipaedia’s greatest achievement is that it is both a Free and an encyclopaedia. And the Wikipaedians were coerced into amending a article, therefore preventing their freedom, as stated by David Shay, chief Israeli Wikipaedian: “Wikipaedia is a free encyclopaedia, and negotiating [a article’s content] under legal threats redefines “Freedom”.“. Wikipaedians chatted about further possibilities of takedown notices and abuse of power, but the conversation’s result remained obvious, Wikipaedia cannot remain free when lawyers learn this simple tactic: have a letter ready, clear your clients history, have new possibilities to redefine truth.
5.
A lawsuit against Wikipaedia (without any regards to venue or jurisdiction) will cause editors to refrain from editing, as editing may hold them liable for statements. Therefore, an encyclopaedia of non-truths will occur; giving only voice to those who have the means to stands financially behind their words.
6.
This is a harsh worlds, the eminent result of any legislation forcing liability on service providers will incur a great expense on expression, causing the democratisation of the web to cease from existence. We need financing for our works here, we need more than this; We need to change the government from the bottom to the top. The Israeli law is drafted in a mean where the strong survive and the weak cannot deal with their actions. Even pro-consumer legislation in Israel is drafted in a way where the strong thrive. Acts like the Anti-Defamation Act and Censorship acts are just the tip of the iceberg since most of us cannot afford a spokesperson and a lawyer to go and campaign against every wrongsay on the net
Newspapers have this privilege, political activists and missionaries have this privilege. A citizen has the net, the same technological and democratic mean which is ideologically neutral and enables a person to get his stage. People started to cooperate and create, wrote content, shared content, and the old structure understood it is about to collapse. The old structure rose today, and fought back. I’m not just talking about Israel Hason and other people, I’m talking about a big structure, which is built in a way where elected persons go through a dedicated route. The recent shaming of people which were not recruited by the army, for example, is a futile attempt of the military elite to prevent a non-militant elite in Israel.
Don’t let the legislators take your power, do something.
