Category: Censorship

EU Tells Internet Archive That Much Of Its Site Is ‘Terrorist Content’ | Techdirt

In the past week, the Internet Archive has received a series of email notices from Europol’s European Union Internet Referral Unit (EU IRU) falsely identifying hundreds of URLs on archive.org as “terrorist propaganda”. At least one of these mistaken URLs was also identified as terrorist content in a separate take down notice from the French government’s L’Office Central de Lutte contre la Criminalité liée aux Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (OCLCTIC)

And just in case you think that maybe the requests are somehow legit, they are so obviously bogus that anyone with a browser would know they are bogus. Included in the list of takedown demands are a bunch of the Archive’s “collection pages” including the entire Project Gutenberg page of public domain texts, it’s collection of over 15 million freely downloadable texts, the famed Prelinger Archive of public domain films and the Archive’s massive Grateful Dead collection. Oh yeah, also a page of CSPAN recordings. So much terrorist content!

Source: EU Tells Internet Archive That Much Of Its Site Is ‘Terrorist Content’ | Techdirt

Oklahoma Bill Would Force Doctors to Lie to Patients

Nestled within the committee’s agenda was Senate Bill 614, which would require abortion providers to counsel patients seeking medication abortion that the process can be reversed. Under the proposed law, a doctor who fails to provide this counsel would be committing a felony and potentially facing lengthy prison time.

Source: Oklahoma Bill Would Force Doctors to Lie to Patients

Thomas Goolnik Again Convinces Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik Getting Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik | Techdirt

Remember Thomas Goolnik? Apparently, he doesn’t think you should. But let’s start this post off with some special notes for two specific parties, and then we’ll get into some more details:

Dear Thomas Goolnik: I’m assuming you’re reading this because you seem to come across every post we write about you and then file bullshit complaints in the EU about how they need to be forgotten. And, every time that happens, we write another post. Perhaps you should think about not trying to abuse the GDPR and the Right to be Forgotten, and recognize that it’s perfectly legal to mention your name. We won’t even mention the original original story you so badly want censored, even though I imagine lots of people will now go hunt that down.

Dear Google RTBF reviewers: this is not an article about some long ago no-longer-relevant event in Mr. Goolnik’s past. Even if we disagree about whether historical convictions should be disappeared down the memory hole, the right to be forgotten is supposed to apply only to past events that are no longer occurring. This article is not about Mr. Goolnik’s past. It is about his present: the fact that he repeatedly is abusing the Right to be Forgotten rules to try to delete our articles about him. This article is about this most recent attempt, and not his past, whatever that might include.

Source: Thomas Goolnik Again Convinces Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik Getting Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik | Techdirt

New Report: Germany Caved To France On Copyright In A Deal For Russian Gas | Techdirt

the German delegation had actually pushed back on the more extreme versions of Article 13 — and, in particular, had demanded that a final version have a clear carve-out for smaller companies, so as not to have them forced out of business by the onerous demands of the law. However, after some back and forth, Germany caved in to France’s demands, with many left scratching their heads as to why. However, some noted the “coincidence” in timing, that right after this, France also withdrew its objections to the pipeline which is very controversial in the EU (and the US, which is threatening sanctions).

Source: New Report: Germany Caved To France On Copyright In A Deal For Russian Gas | Techdirt

Online ‘Reputation Management’ Company Brags About Abusing Copyright Law To Take Down Bad Reviews | Techdirt

There are three ways to effectively remove a Ripoff report:

Method 1. Take legal action and sue the offender. Then once you have won the lawsuit you go here and submit it to Google. https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_courtorder?product=websearch&vid=nullThey may or may not remove the Ripoff report within a few months. This approach is very expensive and time consuming with no guaranteed outcome. We do not use it or recommend it.

Method 2. Bury the Ripoff report from off of the top pages by using a variety of website, links, blogs etc… that go above the Ripoff report and push it off of the front pages so no one will see it.

Method 3. This involves a legal method that the US congress signed up to in 1988 and many people are unaware that this provision exists and how effective it is. It can remove a Ripoff report from the search engines permanently.

We use methods 2 and 3 together and can have your Ripoff report neutralized and removed effectively at a fraction of the cost of going to court!​

Source: Online ‘Reputation Management’ Company Brags About Abusing Copyright Law To Take Down Bad Reviews | Techdirt

“Yelp, but for MAGA” turns red over security disclosure, threatens researcher | Ars Technica

Wallace had left his username, email, and a plaintext password in the code—twice.
There is no authentication for any of the application programming interface calls, so someone could spoof any user—essentially giving them administrative access to the API.
All of the APIs are clearly defined as URLs in the source code.
By using the “Get user by ID” API call, someone could retrieve the user name, email, ban status, and other details on each user account.
Passwords were not in this data, but the entire user database could be retrieved by iterating through all the possible first letters or digits of an account ID.
Any user could be blocked using an HTTP Post to the “block” API.

Source: “Yelp, but for MAGA” turns red over security disclosure, threatens researcher | Ars Technica

Big Win For Open Access, As University Of California Cancels All Elsevier Subscriptions, Worth $11 Million Dollars A Year | Techdirt

As a leader in the global movement toward open access to publicly funded research, the University of California is taking a firm stand by deciding not to renew its subscriptions with Elsevier. Despite months of contract negotiations, Elsevier was unwilling to meet UC’s key goal: securing universal open access to UC research while containing the rapidly escalating costs associated with for-profit journals.In negotiating with Elsevier, UC aimed to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery by ensuring that research produced by UC’s 10 campuses — which accounts for nearly 10 percent of all U.S. publishing output — would be immediately available to the world, without cost to the reader. Under Elsevier’s proposed terms, the publisher would have charged UC authors large publishing fees on top of the university’s multi-million dollar subscription, resulting in much greater cost to the university and much higher profits for Elsevier.

Source: Big Win For Open Access, As University Of California Cancels All Elsevier Subscriptions, Worth $11 Million Dollars A Year | Techdirt

Montana legislator introduces bills to give his state its own science | Ars Technica


It’s no secret that some of our federal legislators don’t have a firm grip on scientific evidence; it only takes watching a session of the House Science Committee, where one member suggested the climate-driven rise of the oceans might instead be caused by rocks falling into the ocean.What’s often overlooked is that state legislators are even worse (though it’s not clear how much this is a product of there simply being more of them). Each year, they oversee a variety of attempts to introduce pseudoscience into the public schools of a number of states.But it recently came out that a legislator in Montana was attempting to have the state officially renounce the findings of the scientific community. And, if the federal government decides to believe the scientists and do something about emissions, he wants the Treasure State to somehow sit those efforts out.

Source: Montana legislator introduces bills to give his state its own science | Ars Technica

Monster Energy Loses Appeal On Monsta Pizza Trademark Ruling | Techdirt

Monster Energy, maker of caffeinated liquid crank, has a long and legendary history of being roughly the most obnoxious trademark bully on the planet. It faces stiff competition in this arena of bad, of course, but it has always put up quite a fight to win that title. The company either sues or attempts to block trademarks for everything that could even possibly be barely linked to the term “monster” in any way. One such case was its opposition to a trademark registration for Monsta Pizza in the UK. Pizza is, of course, not a beverage, but that didn’t stop Monster Energy from trying to keep the pizza chain from its name. It lost that opposition, with the IPO pointing out that its citizens are not stupid enough to be confused between drinks and pizza.And that should have been the end of the story, except that this is Monster Energy we’re talking about, so of course it appealed its loss. Its grounds for appeal amounted to “Nuh-uh! The public really might be confused!” Thankfully, Monster Energy lost this appeal as well.

Source: Monster Energy Loses Appeal On Monsta Pizza Trademark Ruling | Techdirt

Guy Who Forged A Court Order To Delist Content Issues More Bogus Takedown Notices To Remove Posts Discussing His Forgery | Techdirt

The wholly-expected has occurred as a result of Eugene Volokh’s exposure of bogus takedown demands targeting unflattering content — like criminal complaints and factual news articles detailing criminal acts. The Volokh Conspiracy has been targeted by two bogus takedown requests by the same party who engaged in the bogus takedown requests Volokh previously wrote about.

Source: Guy Who Forged A Court Order To Delist Content Issues More Bogus Takedown Notices To Remove Posts Discussing His Forgery | Techdirt