I should note, upfront, that I’ve had the chance to meet FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai a couple of times, and always found him to be interesting and knowledgeable, as well as engaged on important issues. Yet, for whatever reason, when it comes to net neutrality issues, the former Verizon lawyer (clue number 1) seems to have gone off the deep end, tossed all logic and intellectual honesty out the window, in an effort to just lash out angrily with whatever he’s got. We’ve talked about his incoherent attack on Netflix and his sudden and newfound love of transparency (never noted before…).
But his latest move just strips whatever credibility he may have had on the subject completely away. He’s insisting that the FCC’s new net neutrality rules (which he opposes) will inspire North Korea and Iran to further control and censor the internet (which they already control and heavily censor). And he’s not arguing this in a “they hate us for our freedom” way, but he’s actively lying and claiming that this move — a move to guarantee openness and not censorship online — will give the North Korean and Iranian governments the political cover to censor the internet. Let’s be frank, Pai’s statements are complete nonsense.
“If in the United States we adopt regulations that assert more government control over how the Internet operates … it becomes a lot more difficult for us to go on the international stage and tell governments: ‘Look, we want you to keep your hands off the internet,’” he said.
“Even if the ideas aren’t completely identical, you can appreciate the optical difficult in trying to make that case,” he added.
Tag: USA
“Canada Remains A Safe Haven For Online Piracy”
The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has just published its latest submission to the U.S. Government, providing an overview of countries it believes should better protect the interests of the copyright industry.
The IIPA, which includes a wide range of copyright groups including the MPAA, RIAA, BSA and ESA, has listed its complaints against a whole host of countries. As in previous years, Canada was discussed in detail with the recommendation to put it on the 2014 Special 301 ‘watch list’.
One of the main criticisms against Canada is that the country offers a home to many pirate sites. The country recently revised its copyright law but that has done little to address this problem, IIPA believes.
“Although there has been some improvement in recent years, Canada still has far to go to rectify its reputation as a safe haven for Internet pirates. Indeed, a number of the world’s most popular Internet sources dedicated to online theft of copyright material retain connections to Canada.”
Among others, the report lists the popular torrent sites Torrentz.eu, Kickass.to and streaming portal Solarmovie.is as partially Canada-based.
Canada’s inaction against these websites has forced copyright holders to request website blockades in other countries, IIPA claims. In addition, these pirate sites hamper the growth of legal services.
“As long as these sites continue to use Canada as a base, efforts to provide a space within which legitimate, licensed services can take root and grow are undermined, not only in Canada, but around the world,” the report reads.
U.S. Drops to 49th in World Press Freedom Rankings, Worst Since Obama Became President
Each year, Reporters Without Borders issues a worldwide ranking of nations based on the extent to which they protect or abridge press freedom. The group’s 2015 ranking was released this morning, and the United States is ranked 49th.
That is the lowest ranking ever during the Obama presidency, and the second-lowest ranking for the U.S. since the rankings began in 2002 (in 2006, under Bush, the U.S. was ranked 53rd). The countries immediately ahead of the U.S. are Malta, Niger, Burkino Faso, El Salvador, Tonga, Chile and Botswana.
Some of the U.S.’s closest allies fared even worse, including Saudi Arabia (164), Bahrain (163), Egypt (158), the UAE (120), and Israel (101: “In the West Bank, the Israeli security forces deliberately fired rubber bullets and teargas at Palestinian journalists”; 15 journalists were killed during Israeli attack on Gaza; and “the authorities also stepped up control of programme content on their own TV stations during the offensive, banning a spot made by the Israeli NGO B’Tselem that cited the names of 150 children who had been killed in the Gaza Strip”).
To explain the latest drop for the U.S., the press group cited the U.S. government’s persecution of New York Times reporter Jim Risen, as well as the fact that the U.S. “continues its war on information in others, such as WikiLeaks.” Also cited were the numerous arrests of journalists covering the police protests in Ferguson, Missouri (which included The Intercept’s Ryan Devereaux, who was tear-gassed and shot with a rubber bullet prior to his arrest).
Obama To Germans Worried About NSA Surveillance: ‘Hey, Trust Us!’
It’s often been said that trust is something that you earn — or that you completely destroy in irredeemable ways. So it’s a little bizarre to see President Obama trying to restore German trust in the US (and specifically over NSA surveillance) with a bogus “hey, trust us” line, when his own government has spent the past few years doing everything possible to undermine any residual trust. Yet here he is, in a joint appearance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, asking for “the benefit of the doubt.”
There are going to still be areas where we’ve got to work through these issues. We have to internally work through some of these issues, because they’re complicated, they’re difficult. If we are trying to track a network that is planning to carry out attacks in New York or Berlin or Paris, and they are communicating primarily in cyberspace, and we have the capacity to stop an attack like that, but that requires us then being able to operate within that cyberspace, how do we make sure that we’re able to do that, carry out those functions, while still meeting our core principles of respecting the privacy of all our people?
And given Germany’s history, I recognize the sensitivities around this issue. What I would ask would be that the German people recognize that the United States has always been on the forefront of trying to promote civil liberties, that we have traditions of due process that we respect, that we have been a consistent partner of yours in the course of the last 70 years, and certainly the last 25 years, in reinforcing the values that we share. And so occasionally I would like the German people to give us the benefit of the doubt, given our history, as opposed to assuming the worst — assuming that we have been consistently your strong partners and that we share a common set of values.
And if we have that fundamental, underlying trust, there are going to be times where there are disagreements, and both sides may make mistakes, and there are going to be irritants like there are between friends, but the underlying foundation for the relationship remains sound.
Ferguson, Mo., police begin testing new ‘less-lethal’ attachment for guns
About a month after a white officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., the city’s assistant police chief, Al Eickhoff, took to Google and searched under the words “less lethal.”
Eickhoff, a 36-year veteran of Missouri police work, said he was looking for any new device, weapon or ammunition — any alternative to lethal force — that might have prevented a deadly result when Michael Brown and Officer Darren Wilson encountered each other in the noonday heat last August.
Browsing a California company’s Web site, Eickhoff found pictures and videos of an odd-looking, blaze-orange device docked on a normal handgun barrel. When a bullet fired, it melded with an attached projectile the size of a ping-pong ball that flew with enough force to knock a person down, maybe break some ribs, but not kill him, the product’s makers said — even at close range.
Its name: the Alternative.
Great, but how about actually teaching officers gun safety and incident management, instead of letting them shoot at anything that moves?
FCC chair refuses to make net neutrality rules public before approval
FCC chair Tom Wheeler has refused to release the net neutrality rules that the regulator will vote on later this month.
The decision whether to make a document public before it faces formal approval rests with the FCC chair but, despite requests from Congress and two of his own commissioners, Wheeler has refused to do so, leaving the public in the dark over what the regulator will actually approve on 26 February.
Citing “decades of precedent,” Wheeler told the chairs of Congress’ technology committees [PDF] that the FCC works along the same lines as appeal courts and the Supreme Court and commissioners are given the text three weeks before a vote is expected in order to “confer privately, share their views and review drafts confidentially, and then issue their public decision,” claiming “this is commonplace for administrative agencies.”
However, given the extraordinary public interest in the rules – highlighted by the four million public comments received on the topic – not to mention the fact that two of his four commissioners have formally asked Wheeler to make the document public, the decision to keep the document under wraps is raising eyebrows – and hackles.
Commissioner Pai this morning put out a statement complaining about the decision not to release information and highlighting six concerns he has with the proposed plan. “I am disappointed that the plan will not be released publicly,” he noted.