Creative Commons Opposes Piracy-Combatting 'SMART' Copyright Act (creativecommons.org) 54
The non-profit Creative Commons (founded by Lawrence Lessig) opposes a new anti-piracy bill that "proposes to have the US Copyright Office mandate that all websites accepting user-uploaded material implement technologies to automatically filter that content."
We've long believed that these kinds of mandates are overbroad, speech-limiting, and bad for both creators and reusers. (We're joined in this view by others such as Techdirt, Public Knowledge, and EFF, who have already stated their opposition.)
But one part of this attempt stands out to us: the list of "myths" Sen. Tillis released to accompany the bill. In particular, Tillis lists the concern that it is a "filtering mandate that will chill free speech and harm users" as a myth instead of a true danger to free expression-and he cites the existence of CC's metadata as support for his position.
Creative Commons is strongly opposed to mandatory content filtering measures. And we particularly object to having our work and our name used to imply support for a measure that undermines free expression which CC seeks to protect....
Limitations and exceptions are a crucial feature of a copyright system that truly serves the public, and filter mandates fail to respect them. Because of this, licensing metadata should not be used as a mandatory upload filter-and especially not CC license data. We do not support or endorse the measures in this bill, and we object to having our name used to imply otherwise.
But one part of this attempt stands out to us: the list of "myths" Sen. Tillis released to accompany the bill. In particular, Tillis lists the concern that it is a "filtering mandate that will chill free speech and harm users" as a myth instead of a true danger to free expression-and he cites the existence of CC's metadata as support for his position.
Creative Commons is strongly opposed to mandatory content filtering measures. And we particularly object to having our work and our name used to imply support for a measure that undermines free expression which CC seeks to protect....
Limitations and exceptions are a crucial feature of a copyright system that truly serves the public, and filter mandates fail to respect them. Because of this, licensing metadata should not be used as a mandatory upload filter-and especially not CC license data. We do not support or endorse the measures in this bill, and we object to having our name used to imply otherwise.
Checking md5 is perfectly reasonable (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Half-works. But there's a technical issue. A simple hash wouldn't work because it's trivial to circumvent - all the pirate needs to do is alter a byte in the metadata, and you have a new file. So you need to use a perceptal hash, or some other sort of file signature. That works, but also brings the problem of false positives. Even if your false positive rate is an unrealistic one-in-a-million, when you're comparing an upload against a million different songs most uploads are still going to register as infri
Re: (Score:2)
I'll just add that currently the copyright as... errr.. industry, is using pretty incompetent and horribly basic scripts to find "ip violations". Their false positive rate is atrocious, and even after it's supposedly examined by a human, it's still rife with false DMCAs. Also, have them pay the bill for the server, this is all to their benefit and profit after all, so the
Re: Checking md5 is perfectly reasonable (Score:2)
I have a little copyright on this strange way of wording text. I'm finding that a lot of font faces and writing styles infringe on me, so I need to make sure everybody who ever writes anything goes through me first and if my system takes something down that's really just on you to deal with because I'm way more important then whatever free time as you thought you had and even though we are supposed to presume you are innocent, this system assumes the opposite and now I get to enjoy being pampered by you oth
Re: (Score:3)
In 2009 I wrote a Wikipedia article on a somewhat technical mathematical subject. Not a great article by any means, but it explained things and gave good citations to the published literature.
In 2015 an established academic published the definitive monograph on the subject. I eagerly turned to the book for additional material for my article, only to find that the introduction alone copied three nontrivial sentences verbatim from the Wikipedia article.
What are the chances that any automated filter would call
Re: (Score:3)
I am going to ask the obvious question: Did any company producing content analysis tools finance the dear senator campaign? Seriously, the level
I Bought Myself A Politician - MonaLisa Twins (Score:2)
Thought you might enjoy this funny music video from 2021 on "the best democracy money can buy": https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"I bought myself a politician, cause I've never said i played fair.
They're currently on sale, just pick them up from Yale.
They're even cheaper if you take a pair..."
Then it goes on from there...
A satire by me from two decades earlier on copyright law and corruption:
https://pdfernhout.net/microsl... [pdfernhout.net]
"This was originally posted to Slashdot on May 25 2002... It was in relation to an a
Re: (Score:2)
No, checking md5 is NOT reasonable, even with length, because there WILL be collisions, so it will cause false positives. And no matter how long the hash is, the only thing that changes is the average period between false positives. Literally the only way to implement this in a way that actually works without false positives is to have the entire corpus on a "server" (cluster, etc.) somewhere and to have as much chatter as necessary between your server and the signature checking server where if there's a co
Re: (Score:2)
No, checking md5 is NOT reasonable, even with length, because there WILL be collisions,
The hash space of MD5 is 3e+38.
Even if you checked a million files a day for a million years, the odds are against finding even one case of two different files having the same MD5 hash.
There are many reasons the OP is not reasonable, but false positives isn't one of them.
The bill doesn't mandate filtering (Score:3)
The summary is misleading. The bill doesn't mandate filtering.
For sites that don't implement any relevant filtering, nothing changes.
The bill says that *if* a site uses a process that complies with the LOC guidelines, they are immune from suit by copyright holders.
Ps here's the actual bill (Score:2)
Btw here's the bill, in case anyone wants to read it before writing about it.
https://www.tillis.senate.gov/... [senate.gov]
I know, I know. The grand tradition here is to write whatever ridiculous thoughts come to our minds, stuff completely out of our ass without having any idea what we're talking about. Read a law before writing about?! We'd never do that here, right?
Re: (Score:1)
You want me to read the bill before making a decision? Do I look like Elizabeth Warren [youtube.com] to you?
Re: (Score:3)
I know, I know. The grand tradition here is to write whatever ridiculous thoughts come to our minds
No the grand tradition here is to never trust corporations who've lobbied away our basic rights and freedoms to own our own things like the last 200 years of theft of the public domain.
You don't grasp you live in an oligarchy that rubber stamps whatever corporate america wants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
So, flip a coin? (Score:2)
So, rather than reading a bill to see what it says, you flip a coin to decide what to think about it?
Re: (Score:2)
So, rather than reading a bill to see what it says, you flip a coin to decide what to think about it?
No I've just read about the history of our kind and capitalism, maybe you should read oswald spenglers, decline of the west? The man's thesis is that all capitalist states are lawless oligarchies and rule of law is a myth for the plebes, since big business controls the government and writes whatever laws it wants. But that would require historical understanding you lack. You don't seem to grasp, there was the war in iraq, and the big bank bailouts in 2008. Where no one got punished.
Here's one by Rep ala
Re: (Score:2)
Does any of that have anything whatsoever to do with this bill, in any way, shape, or form?
This is a bill to update the wording about approving technical measures for copyright management. Does what you've said have anything at all to do with approving technical measures, or are you just on a drunken rant about nothing and everything?
Re: (Score:2)
Does any of that have anything whatsoever to do with this bill, in any way, shape, or form?
This is a bill to update the wording about approving technical measures for copyright management. Does what you've said have anything at all to do with approving technical measures, or are you just on a drunken rant about nothing and everything?
You clearly don't understand anything about big tech and the last 23+ years of software theft, big media companies are copyright maximalists and they want to kill PC's infinite file copying ability, that's what trusted computing is all about. This is why we lost local applications over the last 23+ years. You don't seem to grasp that big tech companies know people like you are clueless about what is going on. They found that out in the 90's when they started stealing PC games networking code and rebrandi
Re: (Score:2)
So in other words, "no".
No, you have nothing to say related to the topic at hand.
You just want to rant about corporations, on every story. Gotcha.
Re: (Score:2)
So in other words, "no".
No, you have nothing to say related to the topic at hand.
You just want to rant about corporations, on every story. Gotcha.
No thanks, because you assume the bill is legit and not worded in such a way to give more power to corporations when there is plenty of evidence that congress rubberstamps bad policy against the public interest.
Re: (Score:2)
Hey you mentioned the bill! Nice.
I've actually read the bill. Which is why I explained what it says.
I read several drafts of the original language from 1999, so I was curious to see what the proposed updates are.
It's good to read the bills when you know that "congress rubberstamps bad policy". Otherwise you're only going by the title of the bill and whatever your the politicians on your favorite politiball team tell you.
Re:The bill does mandate filtering (Score:1)
2 SEC. 2. DEFINITION OF STANDARD TECHNICAL MEASURES.1 Section 512(i) of title 17, United States Code, is2 amended by striking paragraph (2) and inserting the following: ...
Unless I'm mistaken, paragraph 2:
(a) Transitory Digital Network Communications.â"A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the providerâ(TM)s transmitting, routing, or providing conn
Re: (Score:1)
Obviously paragraph 2 is very simple and easy to understand. It flatly defines that any non-filtered transmission or storage does not bring liability upon the service provider if the transmission process is not filtered.
Removing paragraph 2 would be fine, if it were not replaced with other more stringent requirements regarding mandatory filtering.
The mistake you've made is failing to read the long and complex list of criteria and qualifications that would replace paragraph 2... which makes sense, as they're
That paragraph is not removed (Score:2)
The quoted paragraph is not removed or changed.
That's the second paragraph of (a), not (i).
The change to (i) is nothing major.
The old wording said it has to be available on a reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis. The new wording says either free or reasonable and nondiscriminatory.
Re: (Score:1)
That certainly is not true, there are a ton of changes to wording. I wish I could run a diff of the two documents as we'd expect to see from svn/git.
Here is an example:
original
(2) Definition.â"As used in this subsection, the term âoestandard technical measuresâ means technical measures that are used by copyright owners to identify or protect copyrighted works andâ"
proposed
(2) Definition.â"In this subsection, the term 'standard technical measure
Re: (Score:1)
They've done a terrible job defining it, but what they're essentially stating is that telecommunications providers are exempt. I don't speak legalese, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't simply have been easier to just define the exemptions based on the type of business (communications provider vs platform operator), rather than with ambiguous technobabble.
That's (a), not (i) (Score:2)
You quoted (a). The bill updates the wording of (i), not (a).
The old text of (i) is:
(2)Definition.â"As used in this subsection, the term âoestandard technical measuresâ means technical measures that are used by copyright owners to identify or protect copyrighted works andâ"
(A)have been developed pursuant to a broad consensus of copyright owners and service providers in an open, fair, voluntary, multi-industry standards process;
(B)are available to any person on reasonable and nondiscrimin
Re: (Score:1)
(a), you're right. Or (i), I should say. Understanding the exact impact of this change is far more complex and what I said still applies to section (i) rather than section (a). The new definition is incredibly complex. What I do not understand is how changing (i.2) would impact what they're purported to given the presence of paragraph (a.2). The arguments against the change make more sense, as this change appears to simply create an authoritarian system to decree mandatory measures rather than relying on a
Re: (Score:2)
> this change appears to simply create an authoritarian system to decree mandatory measures rather than relying on a non-existent broad consensus of copyright owners and service providers
There's nothing mandatory about it.
> What I do not understand is how changing (i.2) would impact what they're purported to
The impact is because, as you said "rather than relying on a non-existent broad consensus".
The original wording presumed a broad consensus would happen. Twenty-four years later, that hasn't happene
Re: (Score:1)
Which is fine on its own, surely, but the other changes have other consequences. To say these are "nothing major" seems to be something like tube-vision. It would take me several hours of difficult effort at least to identify "most" of the changes, let alone understand them and their indirect consequences.
Re: (Score:2)
> Which is fine on its own, surely, but the other changes have other consequences. To say these are "nothing major" seems to be something like tube-vision.
I said THAT SENTENCE isn't a major change.
If you'd like to talk about other sentences, we can talk about them.
> It would take me several hours of difficult effort at least to identify "most" of the changes, let alone understand them and their indirect consequences.
It just so happens I spent those hours when the original text was written. So I happen
Re: (Score:2)
The summary is misleading. The bill doesn't mandate filtering.
The bill says that *if* a site uses a process that complies with the LOC guidelines, they are immune from suit by copyright holders.
In other words this bill doesn't require filtering similarly to how the DMCA doesn't require responding to takedown requests.
I wonder then if auditing of the filters for accuracy will be treated equally to the DMCA counter-notice process too?
Re: (Score:2)
> In other words this bill doesn't require filtering similarly to how the DMCA doesn't require responding to takedown requests.
Yes, it's an alternate option within the DMCA to get the same immunity. That option was never used because the original wording didn't make it clear when a particular measure would be sufficient. This bill is a fix-it bill. It authorizes the LOC to say that a particular measure has sufficient support that it grants safe harbor.
> I wonder then if auditing of the filters for acc
Re: (Score:2)
The same was said about the European directive. To nobody's surprise, that was a lie.
Re: (Score:2)
1998 has passed. That didn't happen. (Score:2)
The safe harbor option has been there since 1998. 24 years ago.
Has everybody been sued into bankruptcy?
What would change is the *process* for approving a particular measure.
I copyright the letter E and now all sites must (Score:2)
I copyright the letter E and now all sites must remove that form any user upload or post.
As we know, US law applies globally (Score:2)
I'm sure the Russian and Chinese governments will make this a priority.
Re: As we know, US law applies globally (Score:2)
Lawsuits in China by US IP owners are increasingly successful, especially when we consider most foreigners are considered more deceitful in general by the Chinese legal system.
The reason for this is it can both become a sticking point for harder policy in China and as China produces more copyrighted materials, they want the West to respect those fairly.
Russia on the other hand doesn't give a shit.
Lessig's Crusade (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Rather than a golden age of indie produced films and content capable of supporting a struggling artist made for a pittance on all these new technologies
In most cases, it's not profitable to produce entertainment if you lack the means to promote it. It's exactly the same reason why the average person can't make any money selling NFTs. The value is in being able to promote content, not the content itself. Most entertainment content is actually so worthless that the creators are willing to give it away for free (hence YouTube).
Doesn't the industry already do this voluntarily? (Score:1)
I fail to see the need for this bill. All of the major user supplied content platforms already implement some variant of content matching technology. Most piracy these days is accomplished via peer-to-peer torrent transfers.
The authors of this bill also seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that the "internet" runs on many different architectures, operating systems, and server platforms. It's not a fucking car where you can just slap a camera on the bumper and call it compliant with a new safety re
Re: (Score:1)
You're right, but you've missed out on the purpose of removing paragraph 2. See here:
17 U.S. Code  512 - Limitations on liability relating to material online [cornell.edu]
Paragraph 2 requires that in order to not take on liability for transmission/storage of information, a service provider must not filter the transmission/storage of data.
Current systems work around this (exactly as paragraph 2 intended them to) by scanning data after it has been transmitted, and removing it from storage. The original DMCA also re
No, none of them have been approved (Score:2)
> I fail to see the need for this bill. All of the major user supplied content platforms already implement some variant of content matching technology.
None of those have been approved under the old wording. Twenty years and not a single one has been approved. Meaning that even though they have those systems, they can still be sued, so they have to bow more to the copyright holders.
> The authors of this bill also seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that the "internet" runs on many different arc
Re: (Score:2)
The big guys want the little guys to have to do it, because it will destroy them. I bet they actually wrote this bill. Ever notice how you don't have to attach a list of authors and editors to a bill when introducing it to the floor? That needs to change, now.
Imagine... (Score:2)
Anti-circumvention extension (Score:1)
Would this change not place these new aspects under protection by the anti-circumvention clause?
original
proposed
Until copyright laws are fair (Score:2)
I Am The Truth! (Score:2)
I object to the framing of the arguments over this bill as being a battle between Truth and Myth. It's just a rhetorical trick to marginalize opposition. "You're not arguing against me, you're arguing against The Truth!"
Saw that enough with "I Am The Science" Dr. Fauci, thank you very much.
techdirt (Score:2)
Who quotes techdirt as a supporter? That is like quoting the Weekly World News[0] as a supporter. Techdirt should be called The Daily Outrage because its all click-bait and hyperbole, whatever sells page views and engagement. TD probably got some rando fan to write most of what is on that site for free. Its a complete echo chamber of self-selected fan boys there for the daily outrage.
If your best support is some kind of tech-tabloid, not-news, fanboi-only, web site then you are in a sad place. I've got no l
Mandate (Score:1)
If it is a "mandate" then one may simply decline to accept the mandate.
Sounds to me like someone is using the word "mandate" when they mean "on threat of ..." (which is not a mandate), or "ordered" or "required", which is not encompassed by the word "mandate" -- the word mandate implies voluntary acceptance.
There appears to be a great need of remedial English classes for the MSM (Men Sexing Men) community ...