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UPDATE, OCTOBER 22, 2010: CPJ's board of directors sets policy for the organization. At the October 18 meeting of the board, directors discussed the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, known as COICA.
The September 30 blog post below incorrectly stated that CPJ had "joined with other press freedom and civil liberty organizations and the Internet's pioneering engineers to urge the U.S. Senate to reject COICA in its current form." After discussion, the board determined that CPJ should take no position on the proposed legislation at this time. The matter was referred to the CPJ policy committee for further review.
In an Internet freedom speech in January, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States stands for "a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas." While the Web could be misused to propagate terrorism or steal intellectual property, she said, the administration believed that "these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the Internet for peaceful political purposes." But Congress and other parts of the Obama administration don't appear to have taken Clinton's words to heart. In the last two weeks, they've proposed measures that would break the single Internet, damage Internet users' privacy, and make it more difficult for the State Department or press freedom groups to argue that other countries should not censor or spy on Internet traffic.
On September 20, Sens. Patrick Leahy and Orrin Hatch
introduced the Combating Online Infringement and
Counterfeits Act (COICA), which would require U.S.-hosted
domain name registrars to block, and ISPs to strike from their domain name
system (DNS) servers, the addresses of websites "dedicated to infringing"
on copyrights or trademarks. A week later, The New York
Times reported that the Obama
administration intended to pursue measures obliging Internet services such as
Skype to modify their software to allow U.S. agencies to intercept users'
communications.
Ostensibly,
both U.S. proposals are constrained--in the first case, to blocking sites that
violate intellectual property law; and in the second to providing access for
lawful interception purposes only. But they create technical precedents and
infrastructure changes that can only damage the global fight for free
expression and privacy online. They also contradict Clinton's own expression of
U.S. policy. COICA would require local Internet companies to diverge from the
global DNS system, creating a balkanized DNS system that would dismantle the
idea of a "single Internet." The Internet wiretapping proposal
deliberately weakens the encryption that provides Internet users with their
best defense against illegal surveillance.
For CPJ,
these bills hit even closer to home. The proposals' technical implementations
mirror actions taken recently by other countries with which CPJ has expressed
concern. In Thailand, for example, removing sites from local DNS servers is one
way that the country blocks independent media sites like Prachatai (whose
editor, Chiranuch Premchaiporn was recently arrested). The requirement to
introduce government tapping points in private software is precisely what the
United Arab Emirates and other countries are demanding Research
in Motion do with its BlackBerry mobile systems.
Why should
others not censor controversial political speech, when the United States
creates the same blocking system for mere violations of intellectual property
rights? If American law enforcement can demand that every secure program be
deliberately weakened to allow its agents access, wouldn't every other
country's police have the right to insert similar insecurities into the basic
code of Internet communications? Drawing a firm line against censorship and
widespread surveillance becomes nearly impossible when one of the major
diplomatic voices supporting that line decides to cross it itself.
CPJ has joined with other press freedom and civil liberty organizations and the Internet's pioneering engineers to urge the U.S. Senate to reject COICA in its current form. If legislation was introduced to deliberately weaken the security of Internet communication, we would protest that also. These proposals weaken the U.S. claims to be a good steward of the Internet, and they profoundly damage the fight for online press freedom worldwide.
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You're working off of kind of a ridiculous premise. This isn't political speech that's being enforced against - it's clear violations of law. A law, by the way, that is the underlying basis for the profession of journalism itself.
The opposition to COICA stated in this post is based on a slippery slope argument that is not based in any kind of reality. The US has always protected its citizens from imports of dangerous and damaging products, and the world certainly hasn't come to an end. Documentarians and other filmmakers deserve protection from blatant pirate sites that are based in countries that turn a blind eye to piracy.
Simply put, cutting off piracy mills has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Anybody who truly values and understands these freedoms would never make that connection.
Jeremy,
Wash away the "protecting copyrighted material" and look at the law. "Some" agency in the Government is being given the power to determine that a webpage support piracy, and then force companies to block it. How can this not offend you? How can you not see the possible violations of free speech? How can you not question who is being given this power, what criteria they are going to use. How can you just trust that it will always be done properly?
What fairytale do you live in where you trust the government this much and the individual this little?
afghan govermment ban and block a femuos afghan online media www.benawa.com
we wellcome to CPJ to get a reaction against afghan govermment also
When you consider that the Congress now gives the US president a 'internet kill switch' nothing should surprise in the name of national security.
The phrase, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel(Samuel Johnson-1775)" comes to mind when I hear these kind of actions. There are many more like that in the US historical lexicon that apply to the limits of press freedom.
Frankly, I have been using technology to express opinion since the days of dial-up BBS without government interference, but I am always mindful that, in this new 'post 9/11' world, my comments could be misconstrued and used to condemn me. That has never intimidated me or caused me to temper my opinions; it is just a reality in this brave new world of instant communication. Hopefully those opinions will reach you before the censors reach me...and, so as long as we are free, we carry on...
I'm very glad that Danny O'Brien, formerly of Electronic Frontier Foundation, has not been able to railroad through the board this position of falsely converting the property rights and technical matters of copyright law and copyright disputes into a matter of "freedom of expression" or "civil liberties". They are different; they must not be confused; morally equating them is wrong.
When O'Brien came on the staff, I wrote the leadership of CPJ with my concerns that what would happen is that he would serve as a stalking horse to try to pressure the more mainstream board of CPJ liberals into adapting more EFF-style radical positions. And I'm glad to see that isn't happening -- but I see it as a fragile situation where the board is going to continue to feel itself publicly barraged, as its own staff person takes an anti-COICA position, and as Rebecca McKinnon, a new board member, also publicly pressures the board on her blog by emphasizing that the board is split and that she opposes COICA.
As I've explained at length on McKinnon's blog, there's an absurdity here rooted in the cyberutopianism and radical copyleftism of the EFF that CPJ should not be falling for. And that is that somehow the Internet and mobile telephones are different than land lines or other traditional means of communication of the past. We never spoke with alarm in terms of telephones having "baked into them" the ability of police to place wiretaps. Police have long had the ability to demand the cooperation of telephone companies in the pursuit of crime. Of course this is subject to law and judicial review, and the idea is absurd that somehow a) the Internet is some sort of magic exempt realm and b) that all the adversarial legal defense and judicial review magically disappear just because the executive branch uses its powers on the Internet and not the telephone.
Just because the KGB bugged Soviet dissidents' phones never meant that we stopped using the phone, or somehow blocked our own government from pursuing bank robbers or drug dealers over the telephone lines. In the same way, the government has the right of pursuit of copyright theft -- which is indeed theft, Danny, whether you believe ideologically it isn't or not, or whether Rebecca McKinnon believes it is overly restrictive or not.
This sort of sentence combines and jumbles several concepts and is terribly misleading: "Why should others not censor controversial political speech, when the United States creates the same blocking system for mere violations of intellectual property rights?"
It's fashionable now to raise this new form of moral equivalence -- "If we do this bad thing, why we become morally culpable of this other bad thing some other country is doing." Well, no. Those bad things that other countries do are done all by themselves without any "mirror imaging" from the U.S. To suggest otherwise is a kind of NGO narrative fiction -- and a dangerous one because it ascribes magical properties to the U.S. Why, if only we get rid of copyright and create a big huggable collective farm, why, these other countries will stop blocking dissident websites.
Mere violations? And who says violations of IP is "like" censoring controversial speech? It isn't. You can't claim that because authoritarian governments either invoke this concept maliciously, or block sites, that therefore we don't get to enforce copyright or pursue crimes of terrorism. We do.
Here's a good example of the kind of case EFF and friends are flogging now as horribly evil and oppressive, but in fact it is outright theft and no different than stealing cars:
http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2011/03/embedded-deception.html
Senators do not need to rein in the copyright bill. CPJ needs to remain resistant to this attempt to subvert its mission. CPJ should stick to documenting violations of press freedom as defined under UN convenants and broadly understood in the concept of human rights and showing solidarity to victims of such violations.
Somebody finding it somehow unfair that they can't download a lot of songs for free, or can't torrent their WoW patches as fast as they want because Comcast blocks them, or who hijacks sports feeds and sells ads with them is not a victim of a oppressive government bent on harming press freedom. He is a person in a lawsuit about property issues and theft, and should remain as such.
These distinctions need to be made between the very serious types of issues involved with press freedom violations, and EFF's frivolous and mischievous use of the rhetoric of rights on controversies like "Net Neutrality" or COICA.
How can I "not see it" Jon? Because it's not there. The hysteria that people are trumping up here is very much astro-turfed by Google, which has one interest in all this -- having more capacity to sell ads. It's a problem that CPJ should not be concerned with.