In its early days, the Web was often imagined as a global clearinghouse — a new type of library, with the sum total of human knowledge always at our fingertips. That much has happened — but with a twist: In addition to borrowing existing items from its vast collections, we, the patrons, could also deposit our own books, pamphlets and other scribbles — with no or little quality control.

Such democratization of information-gathering — when accompanied by smart institutional and technological arrangements — has been tremendously useful, giving us Wikipedia and Twitter. But it has also spawned thousands of sites that undermine scientific consensus, overturn well-established facts, and promote conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the move toward social search may further insulate regular visitors to such sites; discovering even more links found by their equally paranoid friends will hardly enlighten them. Is it time for some kind of a quality control system?

Read More: Slate

Former Sentator Chris Dodd

From the sickening department at Techdirt:

Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what’s happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they’d better pass Hollywood’s favorite legislation … or else:

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,”

This certainly follows what many people assumed was happening, and fits with the anonymous comments from studio execs that they will stop contributing to Obama, but to be so blatant about this kind of corruption and money-for-laws politics in the face of an extremely angry public is a really, really, really tone deaf response from Dodd.

It shows, yet again, that he just doesn’t get it. People were protesting not just because of the content of these bills, but because of the corrupt process of big industries like Dodd’s “buying” politicians and “buying” laws. To then come out and make that threat explicit isn’t a way to fix things or win back the public. It’s just going to get them more upset, and to recognize just how corrupt this process is. If Dodd, as he said in yesterday’s NY Times, really wanted to turn things around and come to a more reasonable result, this is exactly how not to do it …

[continues at Techdirt]

Thanks to Anticapitalist.Tumblr.com.

Months ago, I asked the Pentagon for its visual records of Osama bin Laden’s sea burial under the Freedom of Information Act. Today, I received a thick packet of No— a complete denial that any records exist. Read it.

The core of the response is this: the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Special Operations Command, and the Department of the Navy all had their records searched. Nothing. Admiral Mike Mullen’s email was scanned. Nothing. The Pentagon claims not a single person aboard the USS Carl Vinson, where Bin Laden’s remains were disposed of, took a single picture. Not a single email from the ship makes reference to photo or video. Essentially: nobody in the military has evidence. So did these things ever exist? If so, they’re in a filing cabinet at the CIA, where they’ll be safe for the rest of time.

Abby & Robbie Martin discuss the age of information in the 21st century and philosophize what the ability to instantaneously connect with people worldwide has done to modern society; the subjectivity of “truth” as history becomes re-written with every passing generation; Alan Moore v. Frank Miller on Occupy Wall Street; The passing of the new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that allows the indefinite detention of American citizens; the GOP race as a parody of itself with the candidates running and how voting for Ron Paul would be a fun social experiment if nothing else than to spoil the GOP primary.

[Note: This post has been censored by the author in protest of the "rogue sites legislation" (i.e., Internet censorship) currently being considered by U.S. Congress. The full text will be made available soon.]

Dear Internet friends,

As you may already know, I create audio/video mash-ups by crossing older films and music videos with newer music, with varying levels of editing to the original visual content. In a sense, it has become a hobby of mine over the past few years, and I find it very rewarding. My own activity has been inspired in some ways by the mash-up culture more prevalent in music during the last decade.

During my Masters of Journalism program in 2007-2008, I learned that this is legal behavior because of the “fair use” aspect of U.S. copyright law. That says people can use copyrighted works for non-commercial, transformative purposes that add value to the material but don’t hinder the profitability of the original “intellectual property.” In other words, I don’t make any money on these mash-ups; I just do it for fun, and to fulfill my democratic duty of keeping our public domain vibrant and progressive.

However, as Lawrence Lessig explains in his 2004 book Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, copyright law has now become vastly overextended due to the new technology of the Internet. All traditional media content can now be duplicated and distributed online with little to no cost, and incredibly faster than what was possible in the “real world.” This has led to a boom in content-based social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo.

Companies that own copyrights to music, movies, TV shows, and other digital content have been fighting peer-to-peer (p2p) networking for almost a decade now, claiming that they’re losing money because of these new technologies (such as BitTorrent). But really, they haven’t fully demonstrated that online technologies are actually causing them to lose money. What bothers them the most is that they have lost control over distribution, as Rob Sheridan wrote in a now-legendary 2007 eulogy for the p2p music site Oink. (For more on why copyright law is broken, please see my 2010 essay “CC-BY: A Step Into the Belated Future.”)

Things have changed a lot in the past few years. Attempts by media conglomerates and their lobbying groups to sue copyright infringers — usually labeled as “pirates” — have totally failed. Citizens have shown no signs of stopping any of this behavior, because threats now seem empty, and arguments why they should stop don’t make any sense. So now companies are pushing Congress to pass “rogue sites legislation,” claiming that its purpose would be to prevent foreign websites from selling counterfeit or bootlegged goods.

But a bill like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or Protect-IP (that is, protect intellectual property) would do far more than that. First of all, the U.S. government would have to work with Internet service providers to limit access to those foreign sites. They’d also have the power to prevent payment or advertising services from working with foreign copyright infringers.

By the same means, the government could fine or shut down domestic websites for hosting copyrighted content without permission — or even for linking to such content! Critics say this could harm the Domain Name System (DNS) that holds the Internet together!

Now it gets more serious. These bills would make online copyright infringement a felony punishable by up to five years in jail! (For more on the specifics of SOPA, please see this article.)

According to AmericanCensorship.org, SOPA could pass as soon as Thursday, December 15. So as you can imagine, I’m feeling pretty anxious about the possibility of being labeled a felon for activity that should be totally and unquestionably legal!

You might think that if you don’t manipulate or remix copyrighted content that you’re in the clear — but actually these laws could target many other kinds of online activity. For instance, many have pointed out that even uploading a video of yourself singing a copyrighted song (i.e., almost any song you yourself didn’t write) could be punishable as a felony! You don’t even have to be singing the song. If you take a video of your friends and there’s a copyrighted song playing in the background, it would be a felony to upload that video to YouTube or Facebook!

Hopefully I have convinced you of the horrible consequences that will surely ensue if SOPA passes. I also recommend watching the video below. Please visit AmericanCensorship.org (or their partner site, FightForTheFuture.org) and follow instructions on how to spread the word to your friends, family, and colleagues (use the tag #censorshipeverywhere) — and (perhaps more importantly) how to tell your U.S. representatives why they should disobey financial interests and listen to their constituents!

Best regards,

Nick Meador

What better way to sell your wares than to produce a marketing video showing exactly how your product works? Even if that product is spyware, marketed to oppressive regimes.

WikiLeaks, as part of its Spy Files trove of documents, released on Thursday a series of videos from Gamma International, a UK-based firm that markets the Finfisher spyware.

The video shows how the company’s product can be used to sniff WiFi networks from a hotel lobby, hack computers and cell phones, or intercept Skype communications and siphon encryption passwords.

Read More on WIRED’s Threat Level

The U.S. Congress is considering America’s first system for censoring the Internet. Despite public outcry, the Internet Censorship bill could pass at any time. If it does, the Internet and free speech will never be the same, here’s why:

A new report from Google shows a rise in government requests for user account data and content removal, including a request by one unnamed law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality — which the company refused.

The latest Google Transparency Report, also shows historic traffic patterns on Google services via graphs with spikes and drops indicating outages that, in some cases, indicate attempts by governments to block access to Google or the Internet. For instance, all Google servers were inaccessible in Libya during the first six months of this year, as was YouTube in China.

But the truly interesting data are the statistics on requests made to the company by governments for either access to user data or to remove content.

Some countries had large amounts of user data requests. The United States leads that pack, with 5,950 such requests pertaining to more than 11,000 users or accounts, and to which Google complied 93 percent of the time. That’s up from about 4,600 requests in the second half of last year. Other countries seeking lots of user data were India (more than 1,700 requests involving more than 2,400 accounts), France, the United Kingdom, and Germany …

Read More: CNet News

The White House has responded to two petitions asking the US government to formally acknowledge that aliens have visited Earth and to disclose to any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race,” said Phil Larson from the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, on the WhiteHouse.gov website. “In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.”

5,387 people had signed the petition for immediately disclosing the government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings, and 12,078 signed the request for a formal acknowledgement from the White House that extraterrestrials have been engaging the human race.

“Hundreds of military and government agency witnesses have come forward with testimony confirming this extraterrestrial presence,” the second petition states. “Opinion polls now indicate more than 50% of the American people believe there is an extraterrestrial presence and more than 80% believe the government is not telling the truth about this phenomenon. The people have a right to know. The people can handle the truth.”

More: Universe Today

Reporter Charlie Savage of the New York Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out the federal government’s interpretation of its own law…and had it refused. According to the federal government, its own interpretation of the law is classified. What sort of democracy are we living in when the government can refuse to even say how it’s interpreting its own law? That’s not democracy at all.

We’ve been covering for a while now how Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have been very concerned over the secret interpretation the feds have of one piece of the PATRIOT Act. They’ve been trying to pressure the government into publicly explaining how they interpret the law, because they believe that it directly contrasts how most of the public (and many elected officials) believe the feds are interpreting the law. While the two Senators continue to put pressure on the feds and to hint at the feds’ interpretation, just the fact that the government won’t even explain its own interpretation of the law seems ridiculous.

Julian Sanchez points us to the news that Savage and the Times have now sued the federal government for not revealing its interpretation of the PATRIOT Act, pointing out that if parts of the interpretation contain classified material, the Justice Department should black that out and reveal the rest, but simply refusing to reveal the interpretation entirely is a violation of the Freedom of Information Act. You can bet that the feds will do everything they can to get out of this lawsuit, just as they did with the various lawsuits concerning warrantless wiretapping. Here’s hoping the court systems don’t let them. No matter what you think of this administration (or the last one) and how it’s handling the threat of terrorism, I’m curious how anyone can make the argument that the US government should not reveal how it interprets the very laws under which it’s required to operate.

Open government

A proposed rule to the Freedom of Information Act would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national security documents that records don’t exist — even when they do.

Under current FOIA practice, the government may withhold information and issue what’s known as a Glomar denial that says it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of records.

The new proposal — part of a lengthy rule revision by the Department of Justice — would direct government agencies to “respond to the request as if the excluded records did not exist.”

Open-government groups object. “We don’t believe the statute allows the government to lie to FOIA requesters,” said Mike German, senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the provision.

More on ProPublica

The whistleblowing website set up by Julian Assange said that it is temporarily suspending publication of leaks to fight a “blockade” by credit card companies.

The refusal to accept donations has cost the website “tens of millions of dollars” in lost funding, the website said.

Mr Assange was due to make the announcement at a press conference in London, and appeal for donations to help flight the blockade.

WikiLeaks said “in order to fight for its survival” it has decided temporarily to stop publishing secret state documents, while it battles the financial blockade through the courts.

In a statement, WikiLeaks said: “In order to ensure our future survival, WikiLeaks is now forced to temporarily suspend its publishing operations and aggressively fundraise in order to fight back against this blockade and its proponents.”

Read More: Telegraph

Genetically engineered corn, soy and plant oil should be disclosed on mandatory food labels, a coalition of more than 350 producers, trade groups and consumers said in a petition to U.S. regulators.

The U.S. should require added disclosure even when a product containing a gene-altered organism is similar to foods that aren’t bioengineered, the groups said today in the petition to the Food and Drug Administration. Stonyfield Farm, the organic-yogurt maker owned by Danone SA, and Dean Foods Co.’s Horizon Organic are among the coalition members.

Petitioners, led by the Washington-based Center for Food Safety, want to reverse a 1992 Food and Drug Administration policy that doesn’t require different labeling. Gene-altered seeds are used for almost 90 percent of U.S.-grown corn, 94 percent of soy and 90 percent of cottonseed, an oil-producing plant, the coalition said.

“Consumers ought to have the right to choose whether to be buying these foods,” said Gary Hirshberg, chief executive officer of Londonderry, New Hampshire-based Stonyfield Farm, in an interview. “Polls show a vast majority of Americans say they don’t want to eat genetically engineered foods.”

More on Business Week

Mickey Huff, Director of Project Censored, gives a short yet powerful talk about managed news and the media blackout surrounding 9/11:

www.projectcensored.org

The Carer Watch forum, which is an online meeting place for hundreds of disabled people and carers has been taken offline by the hosting company after legal threats made by Atos Origin regarding unspecified comments made on the forum. Atos Origin’s involvement in the condemn Government’s notorious health and disability testing has made them a target of fury amongst many disabled people, which has led to a fierce campaigning against them both on and offline. Atos are fighting back with the CarerWatch forum being only the latest website hit by Atos legal threats. Latest news: That Censored Carer Watch Post Revealed. Libelous? Or just a bullying attempt by Atos to censor free speech on the internet.

In May this year the Afteratos website was threatened with legal action over the use of their corporate logo in the spoof design above (use of corporate logos for parody is a grey area in UK law). Atos also threatened the site over their use of the phrase ‘Atos Kills’. Then last week Atos turned their attention to the aptly named ‘Atos Register of Shame’ claiming that:

“In particular we draw your attention to Atos Register of Shame which is purporting to be a register of health-care professional employees who have allegedly performed substandard medical assessments. This is a direct attack on Atos and the name of the website in and of itself is implying that Atos carries on its business in a manner which is shameful.”

Which is perfectly apt since the way Atos carries out it’s business is indeed shameful. Atos have come under heavy criticism from disability campaigners, charities and increasingly the medical profession for their administration of the government’s Work Capability Assessment and decisions made based on Atos’ computer system has tragically already led to sick and disabled people committing suicide. The Guardian reveals that 12 doctors are currently being investigated by the British Medical Association over their treatment of vulnerable people and may face being struck off.

Enough is enough — it’s time to call on the trusty internet to resist this intimidation and harassment of disabled people and supporters wanting to speak out against this company. Please tweet, blog, share — use the images here, or the phrase ‘atos kills’, let’s get spartacus style on the bastards. Please also consider republishing the offending post. If tweeting use the hashtags #atoskills #atos #atosorigin to let them know we’re talking about them.

For the latest websites which have defied these legal threats visit: johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/the-great-atos-rebrand-update.

With the Obama administration considering federal civil-rights investigations into police brutality, some local police departments have reacted not by cleaning up their act, but instead by intensifying their ongoing efforts to stop citizens from even documenting police misconduct in the first place.

Earlier this summer, Rochester authorities arrested Emily Good for videotaping police while on her own property — and then later used parking tickets to try to punish and intimidate those protesting Good’s arrest. In Las Vegas, it was even worse — the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Friday reported that a police not only arrested Mitchell Crooks but then beat him to a pulp — all for the “crime” of innocently videotaping them from his own driveway. Importantly, Crooks may have been specifically marked for police revenge after he had made headlines in 2002 by documenting Inglewood, California police beating a 16-year-old boy.

The hypocrisy of police trying to stop citizens from videotaping their public actions should be obvious in this, the Patriot Act Age. From warrantless wiretapping to data mining to the proliferation of red-light cameras, the Surveillance State is clearly on the march. And yet, when citizens occasionally exercise their constitutional rights and turn the camera on the Surveillance State itself, they increasingly face the threat of police retribution.

More: Salon.com

The secret grand jury testimony given by former US President Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal is set to be released after more than 36 years, following an order by a federal judge.

Judge Royce Lamberth granted a request by historian Stanley Kutler to release the transcript, citing of its historical significance.

But it will not be unsealed until the government has had a chance to appeal.

The political scandal prompted Nixon to resign in 1974. Nixon, who died 17 years ago, was the only US president to resign. He left office amid the fallout after a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington.

More on the BBC

Looks like they haven’t managed to get completely get rid of it. Hard to believe this story is real. Lauren Schutte reports in the Hollywood Reporter via MSNBC:

Twenty years later, Nirvana is still managing to cause controversy.

The band, whose Nevermind album made waves when it was released in 1991 because of its cover art which featured a naked baby boy floating in a pool, has run into censorship yet again, this time on its Facebook page.

After product shots of the album (which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this fall) were uploaded to Nirvana’s Facebook page, the social networking company removed the photo citing a violation of its Terms of Use.

“Facebook does not allow photos that attack an individual or group, or that contain nudity, drug use, violence or other violations of the Terms of Use,” the notice read.

More on the Hollywood Reporter via MSNBC

NATO is looking into claims that hackers have breached its security and accessed scads of material so confidential the hacker group itself deemed it “irresponsible” to publish them all, despite a series of international raids Tuesday designed to corral the hacking activity.

“NATO is aware that hacker group released what it claims to be NATO classified documents on the internet,” a NATO spokseman said in a statement. “NATO security experts are investigating these claims. We strongly condemn any leak of classified documents which could potentially endanger the security of NATO allies, armed forces and citizens.”

The group, which goes by the name “Anonymous,” claimed to be sitting on about 1 gigabyte of data. The hackers broadcast a link to a PDF file Thursday via Twitter, showing what appeared to be a document headed “NATO Restricted.”

The group’s actions have become intolerable, Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant FBI director, said in an interview with NPR. “We want to send a message that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable,” Chabinsky said. “[Even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it’s entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts.”

For more information, see original article.

A group of 81 major corporations believe that public knowledge of what their CEOs make in respect to the average worker is “useless” information. The Washington Post reports that more than a year ago (H/T Alternet), some of America’s biggest corporate movers and shakers began lobbying Congress to force changes to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, so companies needn’t bother disclose the wage gulf between executives and workers. A House committee approved the bill 33–21.

Rep. Nan A.S. Hayworth (R-NY), who sponsored The Burdensome Data Collection Relief Act (HR1062), said comparing a CEO’s wage to the average worker could “mislead or confuse investors” and that such a comparison “creates heat but sheds no light.” Tim Bartl, senior vice president and general counsel for the Center on Executive Compensation asked “You can already tell where a CEO falls relative to his peers, you can already tell where he falls relative to the average worker in the industry. What is this number going to tell us?”

That comparison tells Americans quite a bit, actually.

CEO’s of major corporations currently make about 263 times what the average worker makes. In 2008, the top 0.1 percent of earners raked in 10 percent of the total income of American workers. The pay of the average woman or man on the street hasn’t seen an increase when adjusted for cost of living since the 70′s. The idea that “the rich get richer” became a truism long ago.

Read the full post at Diatribe Media

Since Google launched its Google Earth feature in 2005, the company has become a worldwide leader in providing high-resolution satellite imagery. In 2010, Google Earth allowed the world to see the extent of the destruction in post-earthquake Haiti. This year, Google released similar images after Japan’s deadly tsunami and earthquake. With just one click, Google can bring the world—and a better understanding of far-away events—to your computer.

There is one entire country, however, that Google Earth won’t show you: Israel.

That’s because, in 1997, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, one section of which is titled, “Prohibition on collection and release of detailed satellite imagery relating to Israel.” The amendment, known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment, calls for a federal agency, the NOAA’s Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs, to regulate the dissemination of zoomed-in images of Israel.

Read More in Mother Jones

A new Tennessee law makes it a crime to “transmit or display an image” online that is likely to “frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress” to someone who sees it. Violations can get you almost a year in jail time or up to $2500 in fines.

The Tennessee legislature has been busy updating its laws for the Internet age, and not always for the better. Last week we reported on a bill that updated Tennessee’s theft-of-service laws to include “subscription entertainment services” like Netflix.

The ban on distressing images, which was signed by Gov. Bill Haslam last week, is also an update to existing law. Tennessee law already made it a crime to make phone calls, send emails, or otherwise communicate directly with someone in a manner the sender “reasonably should know” would “cause emotional distress” to the recipient. If the communciation lacked a “legitimate purpose,” the sender faced jail time.

The new legislation adds images to the list of communications that can trigger criminal liability. But for image postings, the “emotionally distressed” individual need not be the intended recipient. Anyone who sees the image is a potential victim. If a court decides you “should have known” that an image you posted would be upsetting to someone who sees it, you could face months in prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

Read More: ars technica

The Transportation Security Administration is considering changing its policy on photographing security checkpoints after several videos depicting questionable incidents between passengers and TSA screeners were posted on Youtube.

News of the possible changes in policy was posted Friday on the TSA Blog, the same blog that posted that it is permissible to photograph checkpoints, even though most screeners act as if it has always been illegal.

The reason it is considering changing its policy stems from a Youtube video that was recorded in Phoenix when a woman opted-out of the metal detectors and chose to get patted down by a TSA screener.

The woman began yelling hysterically that she had been molested by the screener.

Meanwhile, the woman’s son was recording the incident and continued to do so, even though several TSA screeners told him he was breaking the law.

It is impossible to tell whether the woman was molested in the video, but it’s clear that the TSA screeners were creating their own laws in dealing with the videographer — as they’ve done so many times before.

This is what the TSA had to say about the incident…

For more information, see original article.

Australia’s military has lost its X-Files, detailing sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, across the country, a newspaper report said on Tuesday.

After a two-month search in response to a newspaper Freedom of Information (FOI) request, which forces government officials to release documents of public interest, Australia’s Department of Defence had been unable to locate the files, the Sydney Morning Herald said.

“The files could not be located and Headquarters Air Command formally advised that this file is deemed lost,” the department’s FOI assistant director, Natalie Carpenter, told the paper. Defence officials could not be contacted by Reuters.

The only file Defence had been able to locate was a folder called: “Report on UFOs/Strange Occurrences and Phenomena in Woomera,” a military weapons testing range in the center of Australia’s vast outback, Carpenter said.

Read More: Reuters

The faces at the Pentagon are still mighty red since WikiLeaks. And they don’t want a repeat. A new directive from the Department of Defense aims at squelching leaks — by deputizing a massive number of employees as involuntary snitches.

The document, titled “Counterintelligence Awareness and Reporting (CIAR),” directs DoD employees, military and civilian alike, to “Report, in accordance…the contacts, activities, indicators, and behaviors” of their coworkers. And given the WikiLeaks story, this means keeping tabs on your neighbor’s computer. Suspicious (and must-report) behavior includes:

“Unauthorized possession or operation of cameras, recording devices, computers, and communication devices where classified information is handled or stored.”

“Discussions of classified information over a non-secure communication device.”

“Unauthorized copying, printing, faxing, e-mailing, or transmitting classified material.”

Read More on Gizmodo