Tag: internet

Reddit warns US Copyright Office internet upload filters would harm memes

Reddit has warned the US Copyright Office against internet upload filters, arguing the technology will harm free expression.

The US has been looking to update the DMCA to keep up with the copyright issues found online. Many proposals have come and gone, but the US Copyright Office is now looking into automated tools that can prevent content from being re-uploaded, aka upload filters.

In a submission to the US Copyright Office, Reddit, a platform known for user-submitted content, warned against Standard Technical Measures (STMs), including upload filters.

We obtained a copy of the submission for you here.

“Filtering technologies and STMs ill-suited to the variety of content on Reddit would limit the vitality of some of our platform’s most active communities,” Reddit said.

In its subreddits users post copyrighted content, taking advantage of the fair use principles to create memes and more. An upload filter would substantially harm the free flow of thought.

“Filtering technologies have difficulty merely identifying copyrighted material, let alone assessing the specific context the content was found. They cannot make nuanced judgments about fair use or transformative works,” the platform said.

The automated filters and the false positives they would bring will significantly harm free speech, Reddit argues.

“As a result, standardized measures are likely to remove non-infringing content and suffer from false positives. Worse, these over-removals would strike at the heart of the transformative user-generated content that makes Reddit communities unique,” Reddit explained.

“That is a severe, unnecessary, and unacceptable cost to the free expression of our users and the communities they build.”

Google has implemented such a measure through YouTube’s Content ID system, which is notorious. According to Reddit, Content ID cannot work for every type of platform or site.

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Canada’s broadcasting regulator confirms proposed online censorship bill will apply to user-generated content

During a hearing on Canada’s attempt to regulate what users can say on the internet, Bill C-11 (The Online Streaming Act), the head of Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications regulator again confirmed that the far-reaching regulations will apply to user-generated content.

Ever since the bill was announced, critics have been warning that it empowers the Canadian government to censor the content users post to social media platforms by forcing these platforms to abide by content rules set by Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications regulator – the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

These fears were confirmed by CRTC Chairman Ian Scott earlier this month when he acknowledged that Bill C-11 would apply to user-generated content. And in an appearance at Tuesday’s Canadian Heritage committee hearing, Scott reaffirmed that Bill C-11 allows the CRTC to regulate “user uploaded content.”

CRTC General Counsel and Deputy Executive Director Rachelle Frenette subsequently attempted to downplay the CRTC powers under Bill C-11 by insisting that the regulations apply to platforms, not users. However, she admitted that the CRTC could “issue rules with respect to discoverability.”

Dr. Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, noted (link) that Frenette’s admission is “entirely consistent with the concerns of digital creators, namely that platforms will be required to develop outcomes that result in some content being prioritized in the name of discoverability.”

The critics of Bill C-11 include politicians, creators, and even pro-censorship Big Tech platforms.

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Where Did The Rest Of The Internet Go? Google & Other Search Engines Exposed!

Twenty years ago the internet was a place where you could find countless different perspectives about a wide range of diverse and interesting topics. This unfettered access to information was stimulating, thought-provoking, and a refreshing change from the limited media we had access to up until then. It was truly the wild west of information and anyone was able to propose or discuss new ideas, no matter how outrageous some of these ideas may have sounded. (It’s worth noting that many of the outrageous claims made years ago turned out to be true and is common knowledge to most people today).

Unfortunately, this wild west of information has been essentially tamed in the last decade. Now, information or content creators that do not support the official narrative are deemed “dangerous” and algorithmically expunged by the corporations that now own most of the infrastructure of the internet.

Some people might not like the idea of anyone being able to speak their mind but that is what free speech is, warts and all. You have to take the good with the bad because, without free speech, freedom cannot exist. Voltaire once said,  “the right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech.”

The Internet of today is bland and sanitized. Free thought is punished while groupthink is rewarded. Today’s internet is dominated by mega-corporations that control almost every aspect of information we are allowed to see or hear. In my opinion, the early free-speech days of the internet were extremely important in the evolution of the human race and the globalists feared the awakening that was happening.

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Biden’s Disinformation Chief Nina Jankowicz: Online Mockery of Kamala Harris a Threat to Democracy and National Security

President Joe Biden’s new disinformation chief Nina Jankowicz argued online mockery of Vice President Kamala Harris and other women in public life was a threat to national security.

“Platforms and governments aren’t doing enough,” she wrote on social media. “It’s time to act. Our national security and democracy are at stake.”

The Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of the new Disinformation Governance Board led by Jankowicz on Wednesday.

Jankowicz argued that Congress should create new laws to block mockery of women online, citing the volume of “gender disinformation” used to criticize Harris.

“Congress should reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and include provisions against online gender-based harassment,” Jankowicz wrote in a WIRED article highlighting the “abusive content” sent on social media to women in public life.

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Chief Advisor of Klaus Schwab and the WEF Boasts: Dreams of Dictators Are Now Possible

“Dictators always dreamt about eliminating privacy, monitoring everyone, knowing everything you do, think, and feel…It is now possible.”

The privacy versus security debate is as old as civilization, historian and writer Yuval Noah Harari said recently at the Athens Democracy Forum, an annual international conference in Greece. “But there is now something new: for the first time in history, it is possible to eliminate privacy completely,” said Harari, chief advisor to the World Economic Forum’s leader, Klaus Schwab. 

“It was not possible before,” said Harari, “It is now possible. A fundamental change has taken place. “Dictators always dreamt about completely eliminating privacy, monitoring everyone all the time, and knowing everything you do, and not just everything you do but everything you think, and everything you feel.”

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Motion Picture Association wants online ID checks to curb piracy

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) wants stricter online identity checks to be part of the new trade agreement between the US and countries in the Indo-Pacific region. The film industry group also wants offline enforcement tools to apply online.

MPA is concerned that website operators use unconfirmed identities when signing up for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) services. There are multiple types of IaaS services, but MPA narrows it down to CDNs, proxy services, domain registrars, and web hosting. Companies providing these services enable piracy by providing their services to piracy websites, MPA argues.

IaaS services providers are currently not legally obligated to carry out identity checks. MPA believes the new trade agreement between the US and Indo-Pacific region is an opportunity to introduce such a requirement, Torrent Freak reports.

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Censor The Internet Act: EU Agrees to Expand Online Censorship With ‘Digital Services Act’

The European Union is working to massively expand online censorship, strictly regulate speech during times of “crisis” and restrict online anonymity through digital passports.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both lobbied for the EU to back the censorship bill known as the Digital Services Act on Thursday.

From France 24, “EU agrees on new legislation to tame internet ‘Wild West’ “:

The Digital Services Act (DSA) — the second part of a massive project to regulate tech companies — aims to ensure tougher consequences for platforms and websites that host a long list of banned content ranging from hate speech to disinformation and child sexual abuse images.

[…] Tech giants have been repeatedly called out for failing to police their platforms — a New Zealand terrorist attack that was live-streamed on Facebook in 2019 caused global outrage, and the chaotic insurrection in the US last year was promoted online.

The dark side of the internet also includes e-commerce platforms filled with counterfeit or defective products.

[…] The regulation will require platforms to swiftly remove illegal content as soon as they are aware of its existence. Social networks would have to suspend users who frequently breach the law.

The DSA will force e-commerce sites to verify the identity of suppliers before proposing their products.

[…] The European Commission will oversee yearly audits [of Big Tech firms] and be able to impose fines of up to six percent of their annual sales for repeated infringements.

Looking over the outline of the new agreement it’s striking how they seamlessly conflate child sexual abuse material with “illegal hate speech.”

Both are jumbled together as “illegal content.”

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Obama is expected to call for more internet censorship in Stanford speech

President Barack Obama is today attending Stanford University to give a speech about censoring “misinformation” online. He has delivered such speeches multiple times over the past year.

According to The Chicago Tribune, Obama “is expected to add his voice to demands for rules to rein in the flood of lies polluting public discourse.”

“In private meetings and public appearances over the last year, the former president has waded deeply into the public fray over misinformation and disinformation, warning that the scourge of falsehoods online has eroded the foundations of democracy at home and abroad,” the New York Times said.

Recently, Obama talked about censorship at an event organized by the Atlantic and the University of Chicago. He said social media companies should censor what is not good for society.

“I think it is reasonable for us as a society to have a debate and then put in place a combination of regulatory measures and industry norms that leave intact the opportunity for these platforms to make money,” Obama said. “But say to them that there’s certain practices you engage in that we don’t think are good for society.”

In a tweet Tuesday, Obama promoted censorship, arguing misinformation is a threat to democracy.

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Adults and Children Continuously Targeted for Data Extraction, Surveillance and Censorship

It isn’t an exaggeration to say that not a single day goes by without a new data exploit, hack, breach, leak, or scandal involving censorship by private companies and government agencies. Of course, this is all compounded even further by the fact that more devices contain more sensors that connect to the internet than ever before, offering many new methods for targeting groups and individuals. It has been estimated that by 2030 there could be 125 billion devices — potentially 15 per user — that in some way will comprise the ever-expanding Internet of Things ecosystem.

Amid this sea of two-way data traffic, we have a massive amount of targeted advertising and personally identifiable information extraction that has shown very often to all be done without users’ consent. If there is consent at all, it very likely is through lenthy and confusing Terms and Conditions that almost no one reads in their entirety. Worse still is the proven targeting of children’s data. Lawmakers continue to attempt to rein in these consumer-unfriendly practices, but their current proposals will likely do more harm than good. At this point it should be obvious that even if legislative measures are effectively created, such a waiting game only leaves all of us, including our kids, increasingly vulnerable at any given moment. People want – and deserve – to become personally responsible for their own security and privacy.

Fortunately, there are residential proxy providers on the opposing side that understand the rising awareness by the public of these data violations and creepy intrusions. These companies are doing everything they can to offer the tools necessary for individuals to protect their family’s data and privacy, while also offering increasing freedom to reach the websites that we do want to visit.

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