Two years ago, we wrote about how YouTube took down the original “Rickroll” video of Rick Astley singing “Never Gonna Give You Up” — perhaps the most well known internet meme ever. It seems that that video was taken down yet again, this time due to a “copyright claim from AVG Technologies.”

Not surprisingly, soon after the news of this came out the video was put back up.

TorrentFreak claims that this AVG is the same as the maker of the popular anti-virus software, who almost certainly has no legitimate copyright claim to the video. And while there are other options out there, as well, it once again raises some questions about bogus takedowns, and the “silence first, ask questions later” process that is almost mandatory under the DMCA. Sure, the world isn’t suffering much from a bogus Rickroll takedown (and some may argue they benefit), but just the fact that random third parties seem to be able to take down super popular videos raises serious questions about why we’ve set things up to work this way.

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Remember back when Oracle was claiming that Google owed it billions of dollars for infringing on Oracle patents and copyrights? Yeah. Forget that. The jury just said that there’s no patent infringement at all and the judge has dismissed the jury. All that’s left in this phase of the case is for the judge to make a determination over the copyright issue — and if he decides APIs cannot be covered by copyright, Oracle will have a complete and total loss. Of course, Oracle will almost certainly appeal, but this case has turned into something of a complete disaster for the company.

Groklaw has the details with “no” answers across the board:

Clerk:

Question 1: has Oracle proved by preponderance of evidence that Google infringed?

Claim 11: not proven
27: no
29: no
39: no
40: no
41: no

Question 2: not proven

1: no
20: no

Question 3: no answer, no response, not applicable.

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YouTube has announced that 72 hours of video is now being uploaded to its service every minute. Earlier this year, the statistic was that 60 hours of video was uploaded to its service every minute:

In 2007 we started at six hours [of uploads per minute], then in 2010 we were at 24 hours, then 35, then 48, and now…60 hours of video every minute, an increase of more than 25 percent in the last eight months.

This year, a 25% increase will probably take around around six months. In other words, the rate at which uploads occur is accelerating. Presumably at some point things will level off, but there’s no sign of that yet, and it’s not hard to see YouTube video uploads hitting 120 hours a minute or more.

Now consider the calls from some governments that Google and others pre-screen user-generated material. Just how do they think anyone can do that when every second there’s one or more hours of new material flooding in? The challenge is particularly acute for video, which does not lend itself to automatic screening, unlike text, say. Such machine-based approaches are still extremely rough, and will either let through material governments want censored, or else err massively in the other direction, blocking all kinds of harmless footage.

As Google’s latest figures for YouTube demonstrate, the mismatch between what governments want and what is possible is only going to get worse, thanks to Moore’s Law and its analogs for storage and bandwidth. It’s not clear how this is going to be resolved, but with more and more politicians calling for “something to be done”, the chances of a good outcome based on rational policy making don’t look good.

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Senator Ron Wyden took to the floor of the Senate earlier this week to speak out against pretty much all of the current cybersecurity proposals out there arguing that “privacy should be the default, not the exception.” While noting that narrowly targeted cybersecurity rules could be helpful in protecting consumers, he stated that it seems clear that these bills are much more focused on opening up the internet for government to spy and monitor activities online:

The full speech is chock full of good points, such as the importance of trust in creating a functioning internet, and how these bills can ruin that by cutting away at our privacy:

Congress’ effort to develop a comprehensive approach to cyber security must not erode that trust. When Americans go online to consume digital services and goods, they must believe and know with some certainty that their privacy is adequately protected. The content Americans consume must be at least as private as their library records, video rentals, and book purchases in the brick and mortar world. Our law enforcement and Intelligence agencies should not be free to monitor and catalog the speech of Americans just because it’s online.

But the bill passed by the other body, known as CISPA, would erode that trust. As an attempt to protect our networks from real cyber-threats CISPA is an example of what not to do. CISPA repeals important provisions of existing electronic surveillance law that have been on the books for years without instituting corresponding privacy, confidentiality, and civil liberties safeguards. It creates uncertainty in place of trust, it erodes statutory and constitutional civil rights protections, and it creates a surveillance regime in place of the targeted, nimble, cyber-security program that is needed to truly protect this nation.

Unfortunately, S. 2105, the bill before the Senate shares some of these defects. Currently Internet services and service providers have agreements with their customers that allow them to police and protect their networks and users. Rather than simply allowing these internet companies to share information on users who violate their contracts and pose a security threat, the House and Senate proposals authorize a broad based information sharing regime that can operate with impunity. This would allow the personal data of individual Americans to be shared across a multitude of bureaucratic, military, and law enforcement agencies. This takes place regardless of the privacy agreements individual Americans have with their service providers.

In fact, both the House and Senate bills subordinate all existing privacy rules and constitutional principles to the poorly defined interest of “cyber-security.”

Wyden goes even further later in the speech noting — as many of us have been arguing all along — that these bills are a massive overreaction to the possibility of an issue, which are much more about ways for government contractors to profit from fear:

As they stand, these bills are an overreaction to a legitimate fear. The American people will respond by limiting their online activities. That’s a recipe to stifle speech, innovation, job creation, and social progress.

I believe these bills will encourage the development of a cyber security industry that profits from fear and whose currency is Americans private data. These bills create a Cyber Industrial Complex that has an interest in preserving the problem to which it is the solution.

There’s a lot more in the speech that’s worth hearing, so check it out.

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You may recall last summer that Apple, Microsoft, EMC, RIM, Ericsson and Sony all teamed up to buy Nortel’s patents for $4.5 billion. They beat out a team of Google and Intel who bid a bit less. While there was some antitrust scrutiny over the deal, it was dropped and the purchase went through. Apparently, the new owners picked off a bunch of patents to transfer to themselves… and then all (minus EMC, who, one hopes, was horrified by the plans) decided to support a massive new patent troll armed with the remaining 4,000 patents. The company is called Rockstar Consortium, and it’s run by the folks who used to run Nortel’s patent licensing program anyway — but now employs people whose job it is to just find other companies to threaten:

But Widdowson is a specialist. He’s one of 10 reverse-engineers working full time for a stealthy company funded by some of the biggest names in technology: Apple, Microsoft, Research In Motion, Sony, and Ericsson. Called the Rockstar Consortium, the 32-person outfit has a single-minded mission: It examines successful products, like routers and smartphones, and it tries to find proof that these products infringe on a portfolio of over 4,000 technology patents once owned by one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies.

When a Rockstar engineer uncovers evidence of infringement, the company documents it, contacts the manufacturer, and demands licensing fees for the patents in question. The demand is backed by the implicit threat of a patent lawsuit in federal court. Eight of the company’s staff are lawyers. In the last two months, Rockstar has started negotiations with as many as 100 potential licensees. And with control of a patent portfolio covering core wireless communications technologies such as LTE (Long Term Evolution) and 3G, there is literally no end in sight.

The article admits that Nortel got most of these patents because it wanted them for “defensive” reasons. And now look at how they’re being used. Remember that the next time you hear a company promise to only use its patents defensively. There’s also a ridiculous quote from Rockstar’s CEO, John Veschi:

“A lot of people are still surprised to see the quality and the diversity of the IP that was in Nortel,” he says. “And the fundamental question comes back: ‘How the hell did you guys go bankrupt? Why weren’t you Google? Why weren’t you Facebook? Why weren’t you all these things, because you guys actually had the ideas for these business models before they did?’”

The real answer, of course, is because patents are meaningless. Ideas are worth nothing by themselves. Ideas only matter if you execute, and anyone who’s ever actually executed on an idea will tell you that the original idea almost is never reflected in the final product. The process of going from idea to actual product is a process by which you learn that what matters is not what you thought mattered. And yet, for reasons that make no sense to anyone who has ever actually built a product, creating monopolies around the ideas only serves to create a massive tollbooth towards actual innovation. And that’s what we have here — and it’s funded by Apple and Microsoft.

Once again, we see that these two large companies are using the patent system not to innovate, but to stop up and coming competitors from innovating. The patent system isn’t being used to encourage innovation but to protect incumbents from an open market.

Oh, and worst of all, the reason that the antitrust effort was dropped was because Apple and Microsoft promised to license the key patents under “reasonable terms.” But… Rockstar is not subject to that agreement.

But the new company — Rockstar Consortium — isn’t bound by the promises that its member companies made, according to Veschi. “We are separate,” he says. “That does not apply to us.”

That seems quite problematic, and perhaps worthwhile for the government to reopen its investigation…

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Last fall, we were absolutely amazed at a paper written by some NY state politicians arguing that we have too much free speech, and that we need a “more refined” interpretation of the First Amendment, that outlaws things like “leaving improper messages on online message boards.” Well… as covered by Dave Kravets at Wired, some NY state politicians have introduced the same bill, in both houses of the legislature, that would outlaw anonymous speech online. The actual bill is not particularly subtle.

It lays out the purpose front and center:

AN ACT to amend the civil rights law, in relation to protecting a person’s right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting

Most of the “bill” is definitions, but the key part is as follows — written in all caps like a true internet troll:

A WEB SITE ADMINISTRATOR UPON REQUEST SHALL REMOVE ANY COMMENTS POSTED ON HIS OR HER WEB SITE BY AN ANONYMOUS POSTER UNLESS SUCH ANONYMOUS POSTER AGREES TO ATTACH HIS OR HER NAME TO THE POST AND CONFIRMS THAT HIS OR HER IP ADDRESS, LEGAL NAME, AND HOME ADDRESS ARE ACCURATE. ALL WEB SITE ADMINISTRATORS SHALL HAVE A CONTACT NUMBER OR E-MAIL ADDRESS POSTED FOR SUCH REMOVAL REQUESTS, CLEARLY VISIBLE IN ANY SECTIONS WHERE COMMENTS ARE POSTED.

This will, of course, never become law (or if it does, would never survive a Constitutional First Amendment challenge). The Supreme Court has been pretty clear:

Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.

You would think that lawmakers would know this, but apparently their fragile egos can’t take people making fun of them online.

What’s amazing is that the lawmakers behind this seem oblivious to the concerns about the bill, insisting that anonymous posting can only be used for negative reasons.”

Too often, online bullies hide behind their anonymity as they inflict pain. My legislation turns the spotlight on cyber-bullies by forcing them to reveal their identity or have their post removed. Once a bully is identified, steps can be taken to end the harassment. Bullying is no laughing matter. The more we can do to combat this abuse, the better off we will all be as a society.

That’s from Assemblyman Jim Conte, a sponsor of the bill, who should be forced to not only read the details of the McIntyre case, but also to produce a report about the importance of anonymous speech throughout US history, starting with the Federalist Papers and moving forward from there. It’s scary that these people who govern us who don’t seem to understand what they’re talking about.

Oh, and separately, I kicked this post off by mentioning the paper from last year. It’s worth noting that these bills are not actually being brought forth by the same politicians. We have a general policy here at Techdirt where we don’t mention political parties unless the party itself is key to the story. When we wrote that original comment, someone in the comments accused us of “hiding” the fact that the paper was written by Democrats. As we noted, we would have written it exactly the same way if it were written by Republicans. So, I will point out that the politicians who introduced bill in both houses in NY are… Republicans this time, which I’m only bringing up because of the contrast from last time. This isn’t about parties. It’s about clueless politicians, and neither mainstream party has a monopoly on (or, even, a shortage of) them.

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You may recall that, back in March, on a whim based on a discussion at SXSW, Alexis Ohanian and Erik Martin (from Reddit) teamed up with Holmes Wilson (from Fight for the Future) to crowdfund a billboard to go up in Lamar Smith’s district in Austin. It turns out that you internet people don’t mind paying after all, and helped fund two billboards which have now gone up in Smith’s district, including one across the street from his office in San Antonio, and a second one on “Lamar Blvd” in Austin

Oh, and Ohanian’s BreadPig is selling a “Don’t Mess with the Internet” t-shirt, where each sale will help fund Fight for the Future and its new Internet Defense League — which you should join, in part because if you do cool things to help defend the internet, they hand out totally awesome medals.

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For years we’ve discussed the issue of open access for federally funded research. Currently, NIH has a program that requires any of the research that receives its funds to be available via public open access databases a year after its published elsewhere. While this still allows federally funded research to be locked up under a questionable copyright for a year, it’s certainly better than locking it up for eternity. And while there have been some unfortunate efforts to ban NIH and other government agencies from requiring such conditions, many in academia favor such information sharing.

There is currently a White House petition asking the government to require such free access to scientific journal articles coming out of taxpayer-funded research. The Obama administration has indicated interest in doing this in the past, but has not done so. Forcing the administration to respond to the petition may help nudge them in the right direction. The petition still needs a lot more signatures, though, so get signing.

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A few weeks ago, we noted the UK government was considering plans to bring in an opt-out form of censorship, in what would amount to a kind of porn license, and that such an approach runs the risk of blocking a far wider range of materials. Now the Open Rights Group (ORG) has released a report that shows the “child protection filters” on UK mobile Internet networks are already overblocking sites:

It shows how systems designed to help parents manage their childrens’ access to the Internet can actually affect many more users than intended and block many more sites than they should. It reveals widespread overblocking, problems with transparency and difficulties correcting mistakes.

The report and an update show that sites affected are found in the realms of digital rights (La Quadrature du Net and the Tor Project), technology (GigaOM, London Ruby User Group and the start-up organization Coadec), lifestyle, community and politics.

As the ORG report highlights, this kind of overblocking does not augur well for any UK government attempts to widen filtering to include fixed-line access:

If they follow a similar blueprint of ISP level filtering as mobile operators, all the problems we have highlighted would be reproduced at a larger scale. For example, most fixed-line connections are shared by a number of people using a variety of devices. Implementing filtering in that situation would require a range of approaches from whitelisting for young children to censorship-free connections for adults.

What’s rather depressing is that news that overblocking is already taking place is no surprise: it’s simply inevitable when this kind of network-level approach is taken. It underlines again why filtering has to be implemented locally:

we hope that if the government does pursue such a policy it will be flexible, concentrate on users and devices rather
than networks, allow the tools to be properly described as “parental controls” and above all avoid turning on blocking by default.

Despite the mounting evidence of overblocking on mobile networks, it’s not clear if any of those sensible suggestions will be implemented when it comes to fixed-line access — details of the proposed UK legislation have yet to be announced.

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A couple years ago, a massively struggling Kodak decided that perhaps it could cash in by suing more innovative companies for patent infringement. It filed suits against Apple and RIM for patent infringement both in the courts and using the ITC loophole. It appears that going to the ITC may have been a mistake on Kodak’s part, as the administrative law judge there has said that the patent is invalid, so it doesn’t even matter that some iPhones and Blackberries technically infringe. Of course, this has to hurt even more, considering that Kodak’s trying to sell off its patents. If one of the key ones is found to be invalid, that can’t be helpful in selling the bundle…

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