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Your Silence Today Will Be Echoed Tomorrow!
July 2, 2012 — xanthippaDeclaration of Internet Freedom
July 2, 2012 — xanthippaDECLARATION
We stand for a free and open Internet.
We support transparent and participatory processes for making Internet policy and the establishment of five basic principles:
Expression: Don’t censor the Internet.
Access: Promote universal access to fast and affordable networks.
Openness: Keep the Internet an open network where everyone is free to connect, communicate, write, read, watch, speak, listen, learn, create and innovate.
Innovation: Protect the freedom to innovate and create without permission. Don’t block new technologies, and don’t punish innovators for their users’ actions.
Privacy: Protect privacy and defend everyone’s ability to control how their data and devices are used.
SIGN THE DECLARATION
The Free Dominion Fundraiser
June 29, 2012 — xanthippaWhat is the cost of freedom?
Many have bought it for us, their descendants, with their lives.
Still, in our everyday life, most of us do not have to ask ourselves just how much of our income we would be willing to spend to protect our freedom of speech – in the public square as well as on the internet.
But, not everyone has that luxury.
Consider the case of Costance and Mark Fournier who run the Free Dominion forum. They have become targets of a serial suer, Richard Warman, and his minions.
From setting a legal precedent for protecting online privacy to proving that linking to online content does not constitute copyright infringement, they have done it. And more.
They have had to decide if they should comply with what they considered to be abuse of our (or, their subscribers) civil liberties or if they are willing to pay the money to defend themselves in a lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit…
If you hang out on the internet and comment on things or click on links, you are directly benefiting from the battles the Fourniers have fought and paid for on behalf of all of us!
(And not just in Canada – because of the related nature of our legal systems, Canadian legal precedents are quoted and considered in US rulings and vice versa….after all, we are all children of the Magna Carta!!!)
Yet, they are still facing more lawsuits against them!
They have launched a fundraising campaign to replenish their war chest.
Give generously, please!
From OpenMedia
June 27, 2012 — xanthippaThis is from an email I received today from OpenMedia:
Imagine a world where you could be dragged to court and receive a large fine for simply clicking on the wrong link, where service providers would hand over information about your online activities without privacy safeguards, and where online content could be removed by big media conglomerates at will.
This scenario could become a reality before we know it. In just a few days1, a group of 600 lobbyist “advisors” and un-elected trade representatives are scheming behind closed doors 2 to decide how the Internet will be governed, including whether you could get fined for your Internet use.3 Instead of debating this openly, they’re meeting secretly to craft an Internet trap through an international agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).4 Our government just signed Canada onto this arrangement, without our consent.5
In short, it appears that it will be big-media lobbyists—not citizens—who get to decide whether Canadians will be fined as suspected copyright criminals. Please help us raise a loud call before it’s too late. Visit: http://stopthetrap.net
We know from leaked documents6 that industry lobbyists intend to blanket these new restrictions and laws around the world, without us having any say in the matter. How can they do this?
Instead of an open, public process, they’ll use international tribunals to go around domestic judicial systems.7 And once the trap is set, there’s no going back. That’s why OpenMedia.ca and SumOfUs are launching this campaign today.
Here are the details—the TPP’s Internet trap would:
- Criminalize some of your everyday use of the Internet,8
- Force service providers to collect and hand over your private data without privacy safeguards9, and
- Give media conglomerates more power to fine you for Internet use, remove online content—including entire websites—and even terminate your access to the Internet.10
We deserve to know what will be blocked, and what we and our families will be fined for. If enough of us speak out now, we can prevent the Canadian government from slow-walking us into an Internet trap. Make your voice heard today.
For the possibilities of an open Internet,
Steve, Shea, Lindsey, and Reilly—your OpenMedia team
P.S. We’ve been through a lot together. Industry and government bureaucracies have tried to make Canada’s Internet more costly, controlled, and surveilled. We fought back together and successfully held the line. Now some of those same bureaucracies are going around our democratic processes to impose an Internet trap through this extreme and secretive trade agreement. Let’s take the next step to safeguard the open and affordable Internet together now.
Footnotes
[1] The next round of TPP negotiations will take place between July 2nd and July 9th 2012. The meetings remain controversially secretive without meaningful public participation while, according to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, industry lobbyists from Big Media entities like Comcast and the Motion Picture Association of America are “made privy to details of the agreement”.
[2] The TPP suffers from a lack of transparency, public participation, and democratic accountability. In this letter, a number of U.S. civil society organizations detail and decry the opacity of the process.
[3] See the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s analysis to learn more about the ways the TPP increases the threat of litigation from Big Media. Under the TPP, Big Media could come after you in court even “without the need for a formal complaint by a private party or right holder”.
[4] Find our backgrounder on the TPP here, and our press release about Ottawa’s irresponsible participationhere.
[5] On Tuesday, June 19, 2012, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada would join the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
[6] Public interest groups have obtained the February 2011 draft of the TPP’s Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. In it, we can see that the TPP would drastically increase Internet surveillance, increase Big Media’s Internet lockdown powers, and criminalize content sharing in general, with a likelihood of harsher penalties.
[7] The recently leaked investment chapter of the TPP reveals that the TPP would establish a two-track legal system that gives foreign firms new rights to skirt domestic courts and laws, directly sue governments before foreign tribunals and demand compensation for laws they claim undermine their TPP privileges.
[8] In addition to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s analysis, also see Public Knowledge’s run down of concerns with The TPP IP chapter’s criminalization of downloading.
[9,10] See infojustics.org’s list of the TPP’s effects on the intellectual property law in Canada and Mexico for more information on penalties, privacy implications, and also Public Knowledge: What’s actually in the TPP?
Support OpenMedia.ca
Ruling in the ‘Warman V Free Dominion’ case – well, in one of the cases, at least…
June 26, 2012 — xanthippaI have reported on what I saw and heard in court during the hearing itself here.
Richard Warman is an Ottawa lawyer whose hobby appears to be using the legal system to shut up people who hold views he does not like – and the consequences be damned. He also has frequent-flyer points on using the Human Rights commissions to persecute people he finds ‘annoying’ and many believe that it is at least in part because of the way Mr. Warman used (or, perhaps, abused) the Human Rights Code that the section he used most often, Section 13, got removed.
I suspect that Mr. Warman finds people who stand up to him to be ‘particularly annoying’.
Connie and Mark Fournier run Free Dominion, Canada’s perhaps oldest, certainly largest, discussion forum with a conservative bend. They have stood up to Mr. Warman and his hoard of henchmen for years.
The Fourniers have been a favourite target of the serial suer Warman.
The decision has now come down in the latest lawsuit, which will have impact on how copyright laws are interpreted not just in Canada, but to a lesser extent also in other common law countries. And, it is clearly in favour of the Fourniers and freedom of speech!!!
And, it is hitting all the internet high-sites!
From Dr. Michael Geist:
‘The court’s discussion is important for several reasons. First, the finding that several paragraphs do not constitute a substantial part of the work has echoes to the Supreme Court of Canada hearing in December when the court opened the door to questions about some of the copying in schools not rising to the level of substantial copying. Moreover, if this amount of copying is not substantial, it has implications in a wide range of additional cases (including the Access Copyright model licence). Second, the court’s conclusion is critically important to online chat forums, blogs, and other venues where copying several paragraphs from an article is quite common. Given the court’s analysis, such copying appears to be permissible on at least two grounds, including the notion that such postings can be treated as news reporting for fair dealing purposes.
The third claim involved a link to a photograph posted on the photographer’s site. The court had no trouble concluding that the link was not copyright infringement, rightly noting that the photographer authorized the communication of the work by posting it on his website. This finding should put an end to claims that linking to copyright materials somehow raises potential legal risks. ‘
In other words, 100% in favour of the Fourniers!
And, let’s not forget – this is only one of many lawsuits the Fourniers have faced and are still facing. They have already set legal precedents in Canada when they stood up for the privacy rights of the users of their forum!!!
The practical implication of this is that they had to represent themselves in this latest court battle.
Connie Fournier, a computer scientist with a formidable mind, had to not only research all the laws and put the case together herself, she had to learn all the ‘tricks of the trade’ on how to do it and how to do it right. Not an easy task…
Well, she did something right!!!
From TechDirt:
‘All told, this is an excellent decision, and offers further proof that Canada has the very real potential to move copyright law in a positive direction. There are still lots of battles to be fought, but there’s also a genuine emphasis on the rights of users (especially in the courts) that can hopefully be harnessed and nurtured more and more over time.’
From boingboing:
‘Canadian fed court: linking isn’t copyright infringement, neither is excerpting an article‘
From Law 360:
‘Ottawa Federal Court Judge Donald J. Rennie ruled against attorney Richard Warman, who along with the National Post Co. had sued Free Dominion website operators Mark and Constance Fournier for having reproduced a speech Warman had written and parts of a newspaper article that had been written about him, and for linking a photograph that was…’
I’m sure there is more….
Non-medical circumcision is outlawed in Germany
June 26, 2012 — xanthippaFinally, some reason is breaking out in the world!!!
Germany has outlawed childhood circumcision for religious reasons!!!
(Well, one part of Germany, anyway…but it will affect the country as a whole.)
From The Sun:
‘On Tuesday, the district court ruled circumcision would “irreparably and permanently” harm a boy and performing one for religious purposes “contravenes the interests of the child to decide later on his religious beliefs.”‘
After all, a child is too young to give informed consent to such an invasive surgery. Male or female, removing bits of their bodies to reduce sexual pleasure later on (and, yes – that is the purpose of religious circumcision: reducing sexual pleasure to keep the mind on God, not sex) is inexcusable and abusive.
AFP reports:
‘The regional court in Cologne, western Germany, ruled that the “fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity outweighed the fundamental rights of the parents”, a judgement that is expected to set a legal precedent.’
I’ve been using almost exactly these same words to express these same sentiments – for years. Circumcision, even for boys, is not a trivial matter.
And when it comes to competing rights, it seems reasonable to me to go with the ‘permanent’ versus ‘changeable’ test: once removed, a body part cannot re-grow. It can be reconstructed, but once those nerve endings are cut off, they are gone – permanently. So, that is something a person cannot change.
Other things I consider ‘permanent’ are, among other things, race, physical disability/disfigurement, and to a lesser extent, gender.
Religion – that is changeable.
People change their religions all the time!
This, in my never-humble-opinion, means that when the right to bodily integrity – a ‘permanent’ outweighs the right to religion, which is variable. But, that is just my opinion. It is nice to read that courts in at least some jurisdictions agree with me!
And, even though the ruling was sparked by a case of a botched circumcision on a young Muslim boy, the Jewish community is already crying anti-Semitism…. which just goes to show that all you need to unite the ‘official religionists’ in Jewish and Muslim communities, to get them to work together, is to dangle a secular humanist in front of them!
And yes, I do stress the ‘official’ in the religionists’ description: because it is the busybodies within their communities who hold power over their fellow co-religionists by interfering in their lives in the name of whatever faith it is they are ‘official religionists’ of!
I suspect that most moderate people, of all faiths, will be relieved by this ruling. It will be a tool for them to keep their children safe from the imposition of traumatic religious practices which could potentially leave them with serious sexual dysfunction.
From the National Post:
‘The decision caused outrage in Germany’s Jewish community.
The head of the Central Committee of Jews, Dieter Graumann, said the ruling was “an unprecedented and dramatic intervention in the right of religious communities to self-determination.”’
What self-determination!?!?!
Individual humans have the freedom to practice their religion, so long as they do not break the laws of whatever land they are in.
You know, like sacrificing virgins, or chopping body parts off of babies and/or children!
In any country, the same set of laws must apply equally, to each and every individual – or rule of law, which has improved our living conditions and, according to some experts, reduced the amount of violence we experience in our everyday lives to unprecedented low levels, will indeed break down.
A ‘community’ – religious or not – only has self-determination when it is recognized as a nation-state.
And that is how it must remain!
It is individuals – not communities, religious or otherwise – who have rights!
As Asma Jahangir has said (and I am paraphrasing), we must not give special privileges to ‘minority communities’ because the leaders of these ‘minority communities’ will use these privileges to assert their power and to oppress the other members of these communities. She was speaking of religious minorities in particular…
So, yes – it is about time the practice of childhood non-medical circumcision became not just outlawed, but socially unacceptable.
The Richard O’Dwyer petition
June 24, 2012 — xanthippaDon’t know who Richard O’Dwyer is?
Richard O’Dwyer is a UK citizen and resident.
While in the UK, he is accused (not convicted) of breaking US laws in the UK – and is being extradited to the US for it!
Since when does the US have the right to enforce its laws on people outside its borders, who aren’t even themselves Americans?
OK, Kim Dotcom might have ideas of what this feels like – but he has a legal team to help him while this kid just created a website in his free time where people shared links.
His site itself did not host any copyrighted material – just links.
He complied with each and every takedown notice that he was linking to copyrighted material.
Yet, he is still being extradited to the US where he faces over a decade in jail?!?!?
This is all out of whack…
The petition voicing displeasure at this state of things is here.
It also fleshes out the backstory:
‘Richard O’Dwyer is the human face of the battle between the content industry and the interests of the general public. Earlier this year, in the fight against the anti-copyright bills SOPA and PIPA, the public won its first big victory. This could be our second.’
We should all pay attention.
Copyright infringement has always been – and ought to remain – a civil matter.
That we have permitted the resources of the state to be subverted for the use of Big Media, that we consider copyright infringement to be the same as theft – even though not a single person or corporation had been deprived of the use of their property – that is just unbelievably misguided.
But that people living in distant lands should be extradited and tried for their activities which, at best (if the prosecutors win their case), did not commit copyright infringement directly, but simply facilitated it…
That is too bizzare for words!
Leaked Documents Show the U.N.’s Internet Power Grab…
June 19, 2012 — xanthippaAs if we needed another reason to disband – utterly discredit, send the bureaucrats/delegates home and burn the buildings down, then dance on the ashes – the UN…
I never re-publish another blog’s post in its entirety and will not start now, but Nerfherder has a post which is short, sweet and informative about this issue. It describes what UN’s agency called the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) plans are for restricting access to the internet and gaining huge control over its content. Plus, it is chock full of links!
I strongly recommend reading the short post in its entirety. Here is a bit with key links:
‘ A pair of researchers from George Mason University created a website called WCITLeaks.org in the hopes that someone with access to the secretive proposals would leak them and make them available to the public. Last Friday, that’s exactly what happened. Someone leaked the 212-page planning document being used by governments to prepare for the December conference. You can read it yourself here.’
We really need to start raising awareness about this.
Information is the best weapon in the preservation of freedom.
That is why the UN wants to disarm us.
We must not let them!
This ought to make religions think twice about hiding pedophile predators!
June 18, 2012 — xanthippaThe recipient of this legal smackdown – to the tune of almost 23 million USD – are the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
In a precedent setting ruling, Candace Conti was awarded 28 million USD – 7 is damages and 21 punitive. (The Jehovah’s Witnesses are to pay the 21 million in punitive damages and 40% of the 7 million in damages.)
‘A substantial part of her allegations dealt with claims that the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York (the organisation that oversees the Jehovah’s Witnesses) had adopted a policy in 1989 that instructed congregation leaders to keep child abuse allegations secret. This meant that when Conti’s abuser from the 1990s, Jonathan Kendrick, was convicted in 2004 of molesting another girl, the elders at the North Fremont Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses did nothing to prevent him coming into contact with other kids at the church.’
Of course, he re-offended – and the ‘Church’ is being punished for not taking precautions as well as for not having revealed his history when he did eventually molest another child.
I suppose that making them financially accountable is the only way these organizations which hide behind piety and enforce silence on their congregation through ‘eternal blackmail’ will sit up and start paying attention!
We are not as gullible as we used to be!
We will not permit pedophiles to pray on children, just because they pretend to be ‘closer to god’ than the rest of us!
And, we will not let organizations hide pedophiles just because they play the ‘religion’ card!
As a matter of fact, let’s go a step further: let’s let people believe whatever batpoop-crazy stuff they want, but let’s hold those who profit/make their living from marketing it live up to the same consumer protection laws that every other commercial entity has to.
If you can prove the claims about your product (that would be your dogma) – continue to sell it.
If not – then let’s call fraud a fraud.
While you’re at it – start paying your fair share of taxes on your highly lucrative commercial enterprises!
And if you don’t think that religious organizations are highly lucrative commercial enterprises, then I have this bridge here I’d like to sell you. It’s a great deal: you pay me now, get the bridge after you die!
Oh – and here is an afterthought: stop mutilating your children in the name of religion! It is NOT your religious right to violate the bodily integrity of another human being!!! (Plus being this obsessed with your kids genitals is seriously creepy – please, seek professional help!)
(Sorry – pedophiles make me angry. Organizations that hide, protect and enable them make me angrier… People who mutilate their own kids in the name of their own religion – they make me about as angry as angry can get!)
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 