An alternative take on the SOAS event
Cameron Belay
New Mandala: February 19, 2010
http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2010/02/19/an-alternative-take-on-the-soas-event/
Rather than concentrate on everything that was said at this event, I want to concentrate on what Duncan McCargo said and the behaviour of the Thai audience and panel members. From what he said their attitudes and behaviour were a microcosm of Thai society.
Even before the talk began, rifts were in evidence as royalists gave out pamphlets on the king’s self-sufficiency economy whilst Giles Ungpakorn and his supporters handed out a sheet denouncing royalists. Some (both Thais and foreigners) were suspicious of the Thai Embassy’s motives when it was noticed that they were filming the event. Most worryingly they were filming the faces of those asking questions and the audience.
The main point of McCargo’s talk was that the Thai people have gone from being politically pragmatic to being dogmatic which has led to the present deadlock. When he first started studying Thai politics he believed the greatest problem was what he termed “excessive pragmatism”. He could not understand why Thai people were so flexible and why they changed their loyalties so rapidly. But in the past five years he has witnessed an unanticipated “remarkable reversal”. As he put it, there is now “insufficient pragmatism” and “Thailand has become a country characterised by incredible dogmatism where husbands and wives cannot speak to each other and their kids can’t speak to each other People can’t meet together with old groups of friends from college or go out to lunch with people from work without something coming up and them feeling divided and uncomfortable or not wanting to say things.” McCargo sees no benefits in people being so dogmatic and occupying such polarised positions. He thinks Thais should try to recover some of their pragmatism, which he now realises can be seen as a strength of Thai politics, as well as a weakness.
He believes that the problems in the South, which he has studied extensively, are the same as the problems in the rest of Thailand. They are problems of politics and legitimacy. There is very little space for the people to “carve out their own identity” because they are administered by provisional governors and district officers sent from Bangkok. Privately, many senior officials, policemen and army officers McCargo spoke to said there was a “legitimacy deficit”. He said this needs to be discussed but it cannot happen because there is no opportunity to create public space for more open discussions. This means people are scared to speak out and have difficulty engaging with each other. This lack of discussion combined with the new dogmatism has led to a situation where the red and yellow shirts seem diametrically opposed. But, according to McCargo: “Just beneath the surface there is a fairly substantial consensus that can no longer be articulated.”
We only had to wait until the question and answer session to see evidence of Thai dogmatism. (Due to the question and answer session being held under the Chatham House Rule I cannot reveal the identities of the speakers.) Many of the Thais in the audience seemed hostile to the Thai panellists and some of the questioners were clearly very angry with them. The third questioner, a Thai woman, denounced Bowornsak for switching political allegiances. The chairman was forced to interrupt her and ask her to stop making personal questions. She ignored him and loudly demanded Borowonsak explain why he destroyed the 1997 constitution to approving applause from some of the audience. The chairman nicely diffused the situation by asking for a question from “the man in the red shirt” which bought relieved laughter from the audience. The (Thai) man proceeded to make a short, critical speech rather than ask a question. He accused the king of weakness, criticised the lese majeste law, suggested redistribution of wealth from the king and army, and questioned the suitability of the crown prince to rule. When the chairman asked him if he had a question the man ignored him and continued ranting without asking a question. Finally the chairman had to tell the man his question would be about the lese majeste law. The red shirted man sat down to a loud round of applause.
When responding to this man one of the Thai panel members at first even refused to call him by his name, despite knowing it well. They then ignored the chairman and bickered with each other over what either of them had or had not said to loud shouting and complaints from the audience. Finally the panellist challenged the man to discuss the matter in Thai, which brought more shouts and forced the chairman to step in and restore order.
A non-Thai panel member suggested that maybe the reason so many Thais had attended was because in Thailand they are scared to have such discussions about political issues and aspects of legitimacy due to the lese majeste law. There were certainly Thais present who had very strong opinions on these matters but there was less evidence of reasoned discussion. The Thai panellists and questioners and many of the audience members were openly partisan. Those that spoke (from both sides) seemed more interested in making pre-prepared statements than having a meaningful debate. There was plenty of McCargo’s dogmatism on show and little pragmatism.
Many Thais are not used to freedom of expression or familiar with having such discussions. Maybe it is not so surprising that such debates degenerate and emotions run high. As McCargo has said, Thais need to have the freedom to debate. Once they have that space they may become more used to discussing their differences and may eventually reach some sort of pragmatic consensus, instead of being so dogmatic and oppositional. Judging by the recent behaviour at SOAS it will be a while before that happens.
Learning and adapting
- Bangkok Post: February 19, 2010
- http://www.bangkokpost.com/entertainment/movie/33160/learning-and-adapting
Consumer groups remain sceptical about the Film Act’s rating system.
Six months after the Film Act introduced a film rating system for Thai viewers, the verdict is still mixed. Does Avatar deserve a “G” - suitable for all audiences - when in most countries it has a 13-plus classification? And the psycho-horror The Fourth Kind, which got a G here whereas in other places it got a 15-plus? Is the rating committee still covertly practicing axing orders, or even a ban, on Thai films? Have parents been educated enough about the system, which serves more as a guideline than as prohibition?
“It has been going well,” says Somchai Siang-lai, secretary general of the Office of National Culture Commission, the body under the Ministry of Culture that oversees the rating committee. “There are questions raised by consumer groups and parents, but it’s only been six months. We’re learning and adapting too. I believe we’re on the right track.”
Somchai adds that his office is now focusing on educating parents and school teachers about the benefit of the ratings. “The ratings serve only as a guideline, except the 20-plus category, which requires an ID check,” he says. “Some parents are still not aware of this; what we want to promote especially is for parents to go see movies with their children.
“So far the good thing is that we have received cooperation from theatre owners and schools in spreading the word about the guidelines. I believe that filmmakers and film producers are adjusting well to the new system too.”
Mostly, but probably not all of them. Under the new law, there are five ratings – G, 13-plus, 15-plus, 18-plus and P for promotion – plus the same old scourge of a ban. In the past six months, one film failed to obtain a screening permit; it’s the case of an indirect ban on This Area Is Under Quarantine, an independent Thai film about gay issues and southern unrest that was supposed to screen at the World Film Festival of Bangkok.
Reports also surfaced about Mahalai Sayongkwan and how the rating committee told the filmmaker to cut a brief shot showing a soldier shooting at university students, in a reference to the Oct 14, 1973 incident. Likewise, the film Suay Samurai was told to cut a shot showing Muslim terrorists.
Recently, the rating committee gave Nak Prok (see main story) an 18-plus rating – but on the condition that the filmmaker puts warning messages in problematic scenes involving monks.
“I think the rating committee have been more open-minded on certain issues, but they still have the old mindset regarding other issues, like nudity and politics,” says Prachya Pimakaew, producer and director of many hit Thai films.
“Before the ratings were applied, the authorities had practiced censorship for such a long time that they just can’t forget about it completely. But with the committee giving a rating to Nak Prok, a film that would never have passed the censors three years ago, I have high hopes that filmmakers will feel more confident to produce movies that they wouldn’t dare to produce years ago.”
Yet scepticism still runs high, and for good reason, among audiences who dare to speak out. The Network of Thai Movie Audience is a loose group of people who keep track of the performance of the rating committee; they’re a consumer watchdog, so to speak, that airs concerns and comments over a number of the decisions made by the rating body, especially when it involves censorship. Their strongholds are the Internet and movie magazines, though recently they’ve begun working with other NGOs and consumer groups.
“There are many G-rated films that raise doubts over the standard of the rating decisions,” says Tuchchai Wongkitrungruang, a founding member of the group. “Like Avatar – not the smoking scene, but the suggestion of violence – or the Thai film Bangkok Traffic Love Story, which has double-meaning jokes. But what we’re concerned with the most is the practice of censorship and banning, like what happened to the film This Area Is Under Quarantine.
“At the end of this month we will issue our analysis and compilation of data gathered during the past six months regarding the ratings. We’re also working with a group called Ilaw, which campaigns for amendments of several bills that contain aspects about curbing the rights of people. We’re looking into the possibility of asking that the ban order be removed from the Film Act,” he says.
Robed in Controversy
Shelved for three years for fear of facing a ban, a Thai temple thriller featuring gun-toting monks is getting a release and has become a case study of the still-confusing rating system
- Kong Rithdee
- Bangkok Post: February 19, 2010
- http://www.bangkokpost.com/entertainment/movie/33159/robed-in-controversy
Fake monks, real monks; it’s hard to tell one from the other. Tonsured men wrapped in the saffron robes of Buddhist monks swagger like cocky gangsters around a temple, then point guns at other monks’ heads, swear and scold blithely, and one of them even brings a woman into his room in broad daylight.
With scenes like these in his film, is Pawat Pawangkasiri pushing the envelope, courting controversy, or simply looking things in the eye? In his temple thriller Nak Prok (The Shadow of Naga), two bandits robe themselves as monks and hole up in a forest monastery where they’ve buried a bag of heist money that they’re now trying to dig up. To play at being monks is also a foolproof way to hide from the police, the thieves believe, and indeed it is.
But perhaps the censors wouldn’t agree. Nak Prok is a fine case study of our still-confusing rules of censorship and the rating law, and maybe of a bigger question about how much a movie is allowed to imitate reality. Director Pawat finished Nak Prok in 2007, but his producers at Sahamongkol Film International assumed then that it wouldn’t pass the censors given its many “sensitive” scenes involving monks, albeit fake ones, running around a holy place with girls and guns in tow. Especially provocative is a scene of a bogus monk pointing a pistol at another man in a maniacal gesture. After much re-editing to no avail, the film was basically canned for nearly three years.
“In 2007, the film Syndromes and a Century ran into trouble with the censorship board for showing scenes of monks playing with a radio-controlled toy, they said it was ‘inappropriate’,” says Pawat. “My film shows much more than that. So we assumed that we were asking for trouble if we submitted it to the censors.”
It was an assumption, which Pawat admits could be right or wrong. Yet the unlikely happened after three years: Under the new Film Act that introduces the rating system, Nak Prok will finally be released on the big screen next month – without a single cut, though with something weirder. The film has received the 18-plus classification under the six-month-old committee at the Office of National Culture Commission, but it will have to include warning messages in two scenes, one showing a monk (a real one) tattooing a man, and the other one showing the mother of a monk touching her son’s hand. The warnings will flash up during those scenes with messages informing viewers that what they’re seeing are inappropriate acts. There are no objections about those scenes with guns and girls though.
“At this point, I don’t mind if I have to flash warning messages on screen,” says Pawat, whose previous film, Orahan Summer, was a children’s comedy about novice monks. “I just want the film to be screened and for my producers to make some money. It’s strange, yes, for a feature film to have warning captions – and in the scenes that I’m least worried about instead of those we’ve been concerned with.
“Still, I realise that without the rating system my film might not have been permitted to be shown at all. This is a good development.”
This will be the first time under the new Film Act that a feature film has been instructed to carry warning captions, a practice that has been done extensively for DVD and TV movies (for scenes showing people smoking, playing cards, or holding guns). By law, the 18-plus rating doesn’t require ID checks at cinema entrances, but the 20-plus rating does. Most studios try to avoid the 20-plus classification since it potentially reduces the number of viewers. It’s likely that the producers of Nak Prok have agreed to the 18-plus rating on the condition of having the warning messages, in exchange for the stricter 20-plus rating.
On his part, Pawat stresses that it was never his intention to push the envelope with the story of sordid monks, phony or real. He was pure in spirit, or too innocent, that it never crossed his mind while filming that his film could get into trouble with the gatekeepers. What he was trying to do, he says, was present what’s really happening in a society that has the habit of looking up to anybody clad in an orange robe without thinking twice.
“The idea came from headlines in newspapers,” Pawat says. “Almost every day you read about charlatans disguised as monks, or real monks even, doing all sorts of bad things. And it struck me as a Buddhist that Buddhism is being used by these bad people. I’m not super-religious; I was ordained as a monk briefly, and I have an interest in meditation and Buddhist teachings. What I think is that today we’re only worshipping what’s on the surface, and not the essence of Lord Buddha’s words.
“If someone wraps himself in Buddhist robes, we’re ready to believe that he’s a good man. But as we all know, it’s not always the case – like the thieves in the film. I never set out to criticise Buddhism, I simply want to show the truth that there are actually bad men who’re exploiting the religion.”
When, in 2008, Pawat wasn’t sure about the fate of his film, he decided to ask two respected liberal monks to watch Nak Prok: Phra Payom Kalayano and Wor Wachiramethi. Both, separately, watched the film in its entirety and had not a single objection. Thus it’s not clear why the studio still didn’t take its chances by submitting the film to the censors instead of waiting until last December.
In the end, The Shadow of Naga will be judged not only by its representation of monks, real or fake, but also by its cinematic quality as a thriller that attempts to expose the dark side of the human mind. The film stars three popular male leads, Ray McDonald, Somchai Khemklad and Pitisak Yaowananon, who relish the chance to play expletive-spitting, gun-toting monks. It’s a guys’ film with a mix of sardonic and sentimental messages, and it remains to be seen if it will create more headlines from Buddhist groups once it hits the screen.
“I hope that with Nak Prok passing the censors without any cuts, it will encourage filmmakers to make films that discuss strong and potentially controversial subjects,” says Pawat. “I’ve done my part, now let’s see what others will think.”
[CJ Hinke of FACT comments: Dare we say, brilliant? Once again, WikiLeaks fireballs worldwide censorship in The New York Times. We have high hopes Iceland will become the first complete censorship-free nation. There should be lineups to get a .is domain and set up VPNs for a censor-free Internet in every country, creating huge local industry in this financially bankrupt but visionary country. Iceland's young politicians are the first parliamentarians to actually create national security and prosperity. 300,000 citizens can make a global difference. Some folks have nominated the Internet itself for this year’s Nobel peace prize. I may be biased by I think WikiLeaks deserves the prize.]
LINK BY LINK
A Vision of Iceland as a Haven for Journalists
The New York Times: February 21, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/business/media/22link.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
ICELAND, where the journalists run free.
A banking scandal nearly bankrupted this tiny island nation (population: barely 300,000) little more than a year ago, but Iceland is considering a new vision: to become a haven for journalists and publishers by offering some of the most aggressive protections for free speech and investigative journalism in the world.
The proposal, the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, combines in a single piece of legislation provisions from around the world: whistle-blower laws and rules about Internet providers from the United States; source protection laws from Belgium; freedom of information laws from Estonia and Scotland, among others; and New York State’s law to counteract “libel tourism,” the practice of suing in courts, like Britain’s, where journalists have the hardest time prevailing.
“We would become the inverse of a tax haven,” said Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Parliament and a sponsor of the initiative. “They are trying to make everything opaque. We are trying to make it transparent.”
For many observers, this legislation represents a direct reversal of recent Icelandic history. Secret dealings by a few banks in Iceland, combined with a lack of regulation and oversight, led to calamitous debts that were nine times the gross domestic product. In response, Iceland would institutionalize the most aggressive sunshine laws possible.
There are 19 sponsors of the media initiative in the Althing, Iceland’s Parliament; that is about a third of the membership, representing all parties on the political spectrum, Ms. Jonsdottir said. The legislation is set to be debated this week. While the left-leaning government that took power after the crisis can have no official position on the proposal, she said, presumably it would be sympathetic to the idea.
The plan to make Iceland a world leader in journalism protection took shape in December with the assistance of two leaders of the whistle-blower Web site Wikileaks.org, Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt, whose publish-nearly-anything ideology has given them personal experience with news media laws around the globe.
They outlined the idea at the annual meeting of the Icelandic Digital Freedoms Society, and relocated there in January to help local advocates and politicians draft the legislation.
The pitch was, in part, practical: much the way businesses relocate to countries like the Cayman Islands or Switzerland to take advantage of legal protections and shield laws for bank accounts, publications would relocate to Iceland — or at least relocate their computer servers that publish their Web sites — in order to get the benefits, and gain access to Iceland’s plentiful energy resources.
“Iceland could become an ideal environment for Internet-based international media and publishers to register their services, start-ups, data centers and human rights organizations,” reads the Web site, which explains the proposal and answers questions about it. “It could be a lever for the economy and create new work employment opportunities.”
But, of course, there is a strong moral claim being made as well. And the timing for such an appeal was ideal, said Smari McCarthy of the digital freedoms organization. The population was shaking off the shock of the economic crisis and dealing with the humiliation of needing financial assistance from European neighbors.
“Throughout the run-up to the crisis — the bubble — people were so excited with what they were doing,” said Mr. McCarthy, who has an Irish parent but has lived in Iceland since he was 11. “Suddenly that dream disappears. People had the option of sinking into some sort of sadness about it, some national depression, or the alternative, trying to figure out a new way of doing things.”
To some experts on how the Internet is changing media law, the Iceland initiative should be hailed more for its bold thinking than for offering genuine legal protection.
“The proposal is largely symbolic — which is not to say unimportant,” said David Ardia, who runs the citizen media law project at the Berkman Center of Harvard Law School. “Its impacts are likely to be felt long term.”
For example, he praised the wisdom of offering a package of proposals touching on how news is gathered, distributed and read — thus, issues like Internet privacy, protection for search engines and compensation for defending frivolous lawsuits are all considered part of protecting free speech.
“There is a value in thinking holistically about creating an environment to foster good journalism,” he said. “Institutions of power have shown a willingness to use their power to stop reporting they don’t like — anything that levels the playing field is a good thing.”
He was more skeptical, however, of the idea that Icelandic law could protect journalism as it was practiced somewhere else, simply because of legal registration or where Internet servers were located.
“Obviously Iceland can’t pass a law that could affect the domestic laws of another country — that changes the law in China, Pakistan or Turkey,” he said.
“It can say that its courts won’t enforce a judgment rendered in another country’s courts,” he added, but as long as the publication has resources in that country, it would be vulnerable. “Most journalism is done on the ground — it is great that servers get these protections, but it won’t help local sites.”
That such an unprecedented package of protections has a chance of passing is a reflection of how the crisis realigned Iceland’s politics, a fact typified by the ascendance of Ms. Jonsdottir, a 42-year-old writer, designer and Internet activist.
In an interview from the capital, Reykjavik, she described a peripatetic life that included a brief stint selling Kirby vacuum cleaners in New Jersey. Before entering Parliament in April, she said, she was translating and designing books, and organizing protests about Tibet outside the Chinese Embassy.
Two-thirds of the members of Parliament, like her, have been serving less than two years, she said.
“I would never have decided to go for Parliament, if there wasn’t a crisis,” she said. Her party, the Movement, was created barely eight weeks before the election, and despite having little money, gained 7 percent of the vote.
Now Ms. Jonsdottir holds regular meetings with the prime minister, and is taking up the task of shepherding the media-protection proposal out of committee and into law.
“Legislation tends to go into a long, deep coma in committee, and all of my effort will be to get it out of committee,” she said. “The good thing about being new in Parliament is not knowing the traditions.”
Using the new Opera for circumvention?
Haddock
Sesawe: August 24, 2009
https://sesawe.net/blog/new-tools-opera-puff/
A new circumvention methods has crossed my desk lately: the new beta of the Opera browser, v10.
It’s not intended to be a circumvention tool; rather, it has a built-in feature called Turbo which, when enabled, loads your HTTP (but not HTTPS) content through an Opera-run server, which fetches your web pages, downsizes (or eliminates) some “heavy” inline content like graphics, compresses them, and delivers them to you. This (compression) measurably speeds up retrieval of content if your connectivity’s slow, but has the side-effect of basically being a proxy server to circumvent restrictions on content which limit your access. It uses Opera’s bandwidth, so using it intensively might require a payment or subscription at some point.
And the circumvention capability could also result in Opera being blocked in internet-filtering countries and/or blacklisted by the providers of web filtering software like Websense’s Web Filter, McAfee’s SmartFilter, FortiNet’s FortiGuard, and Marshal8e6.
Watch a demo of Turbo here
France leapfrogs past Australia in Big Brother stakes
- Lock up your kids and lock down your PCs
The Register: February 17, 2010
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/17/france_ip_law/
France yesterday put in its bid for an unlikely prize, becoming the first western country to make even Australia look liberal when it comes to state powers of internet censorship.
In the teeth of fierce opposition both inside and outside parliament, the National Assembly approved, by 312 votes to 214 against, a first reading of a bill on Internal Security – the quaintly titled “LOPPSI 2″.
LOPPSI – otherwise known as Loi d’Orientation et de Programmation pour la SÈcuritÈ IntÈrieure (pdf)- is a ragbag of measures designed to make France a safer place. Like similar UK legislation – most notably the various Criminal Justice acts brought in over the last decade – LOPPSI brings together a number of apparently unrelated proposals which would severely restrict individual rights in all walks of life.
Last week, for instance, the Assembly agreed to include within the new law a measure that would allow Prefects to sign off on a curfew for children aged under 13, out unaccompanied between the hours of 11 pm and 6 am.
The bill also includes measures that would increase police spend on “security”, create additional penalties for counterfeiting and ID theft, increase CCTV surveillance, and widen access to the Police DNA database.
However, it is in the online area that some of the most radical proposals are to be found, with the criminalisation of online ID theft, provision for the police to tap online connections in the course of investigations, and most controversially of all, allowing the state to order ISPs to block (filter) specific internet URLs according to ministerial diktat.
It has also been suggested that the state should have the right to plant covert trojans to monitor individual PC usage.
Whilst the latter measures are put forward on the grounds of child protection, critics have been quick to point out that, in the absence of any judicial oversight mechanism, this is a power just waiting to be abused.
A broad coalition of groups and individuals outside the French parliamentary system have been scathing in their condemnation. LOPPSI, a site dedicated to this law, writes: “The French Government has got it worked out. To place limits on the free space that is the internet, they have to control it: but how can they destroy such a space without fierce resistance?”
The dishonest answer, according to this site, is to use the paedophile as a pretext. Because, they say “the whole world is instantly terrified”. Despite this, the measures proposed will do little to safeguard children – and nothing to prevent anyone who can afford to spend €5 a month from accessing the same material via VPN.
Similar arguments have been put forward in the Assembly by a number of Deputies. Patrick Braouzec and Michel VaxËs proposed the deletion of this power, arguing that it does not really solve the child pornography issue. They argued that this approach could be a mistake as filtering will allow hiding the evolution of the phenomenon, whilst Paedophiles who use the internet are very capable of getting around any filtering techniques by using crypting and anonymisation methods, thus being “paradoxically, better protected”. Amendments along the same lines were also put forward by Deputies Lionel Tardy and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan.
Meanwhile, the French Data Protection Authority, CNIL, has made plain its concerns with several of the proposed measures. CNIL expressed fears related to several provisions of the draft, especially in relation to the collection and retention of data, installation of Trojan horses on computers and the surveillance of public access to the Internet.
The legislation still has some way to go. However, the sentiment contained within the draft that passed yesterday is populist and, on the voting evidence so far, many Deputies are clearly well aware of that.
Cashing in on Internet censorship
Lara Farrar
Cable News Network: February 19, 2010
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/18/internet.censorship.business/?hpt=Sbin
A growing number of software companies are capitalizing on an unexpected business opportunity: Internet censorship.
In countries where governments continue to ramp up Web filtering systems, more people are searching for tools that will allow them to access inaccessible information — and they are willing to pay for them.
Such tools include virtual private networks (VPN), proxy servers and other workarounds that enable users to breach barriers to blocked information online.
VPNs “tunnel” through to servers in a country with no Web controls, encrypting information under an anonymous computer address to conceal private traffic. Proxies also allow unfiltered Internet access but are considered less secure than VPNs.
“The market is growing very rapidly at the moment,” said Patrick Lin, who offers a circumvention technology he calls “Puff” to those looking for ways to leap over firewalls. One version is available for free, while another costs $16 to use for a year.
According to Lin, since he launched the application from his California office last June, it has been downloaded more than 500,000 times. Sixty percent of its 60,000 daily users are from China while 40 percent are in Iran, he said.
“The reason is the Chinese and the Iranian governments are becoming more aggressive with blocking Web sites,” he told CNN. “If China blocks Gmail, then the user base will increase a lot more rapidly.”
Earlier this month Iranian authorities imposed restrictions on Internet access in the country and a permanent ban on Gmail, Google’s e-mail service.
While there has been no such move in China, there has been speculation Google’s international site could be blocked after the company announced on January 12 it was considering ending its operations in the country and would stop censoring results on its Chinese search engine, Google.cn.
On February 12, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said the Internet giant will not pull the plug in China and would agree to filter pornographic and other potentially objectionable material.
“When we see new blocking techniques in China, we have to counter them. It is an ongoing battle.”
–Bill Bullock, VPN provider
However, Google’s video sharing portal, YouTube, and popular social networking sites Facebook and Twitter are blocked in China, which means companies have already been cashing in on censored Web surfers who can no longer connect with friends and family online.
David Gorodyansky, founder of the U.S.-based company AnchorFree, said his business has around one million people in China using its free VPN Hotspot Shield each month. The VPN has over 7 million monthly users in 100 countries.
Gorodyansky says the company is profitable and generates revenues by selling ads appearing on every Web page. There are 50 million page views a month in China and more than a billion worldwide.
“We have grown 500 percent in the last 12 months,” Gorodyansky told CNN. “We would like to continue growing as fast as possible. We think there is no reason why usage can’t grow from 7 million to 70 million around the world.”
When AnchorFree introduced its product in 2005, it was intended for people concerned about online identity theft or who are safely using wireless networks in hotels and other public places.
“It is an interesting position to be in, for sure,” said Gorodyansky. “Our goal is not to in anyway disrespect the government of China. We just happened to build a cool technology that people in China want to use.”
Too many people in China, apparently.
When firewall-breaching services accrue substantial user bases, more often than not, they fall victim to government blocks. Hotspot Shield, along with other, usually free, VPNs and proxies have been temporarily shut down or completely banished by Internet police in China as well as Iran.
“That is why we have not specifically done a tremendous amount of advertising in China,” Bill Bullock, head of WiTopia, a Virginia-based company that sells a VPN service, told CNN.
“We just kind of do what we need to do,” he said. “When we see new blocking techniques come out [in China], we have counter measures for those. It is an ongoing battle, we are doing business in a country that does not want us to do business there.”
Steve Dickinson, a China-based lawyer with Harris & Moure, an international business law firm, said that companies supplying VPN products in China are technically breaking Chinese law.
“China has no jurisdiction over such persons. As long as they do not physically enter China, there is no risk,” he said in an email to CNN.
While free proxies are frequently shut down, subscription VPNs rarely face blockages, largely because they target expatriates and foreign businesspeople, an almost inconsequential share of Web users in China.
“It is only the elite who can get access or know how to use [the software],” Andrew Lih, director of new media at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, told CNN.
“As long as the Chinese government can keep 90 percent [behind the firewall], then there is not enough critical mass for there to be a problem,” he said.
“Even though you will have new ways of piercing the firewall, as long as you have the authorities controlling the physical access points, in the long term, the authorities will have the upper hand.”
There could one day be a limit to the expansion of an industry banking its future on selling what is, in essence, freedom.
While there is growing awareness of the technologies, companies running them must constantly outsmart Internet police intent on shutting them down. And in China, many local users are unwilling to pay, either because they lack access to a foreign credit card or would rather use something that is free.
Research also suggests many Chinese may not have a desire to use the tools at all. A 2007 study conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found 80 percent of those surveyed supported government control of the Internet.
“We don’t want to rely on [censoring of the Internet for our business],” said Bullock. “But we may never get rid of it. Someone will always be trying to control the flow of information.”
Lawyers (or journalists) with Gmail accounts: Careful with the Google Buzz
Don Cruse
The Supreme Court of Texas: February 11, 2010
http://www.scotxblog.com/legal-tech/lawyer-privacy-on-google-buzz/#more-1519
Do you use Gmail, even for personal mail? Do any of your clients use Gmail?
There was a pretty massive shift in your privacy a couple of days ago. You might not have noticed it. But unless you take a few steps to protect yourself, Google may be sharing some of your confidences with the world.
Here’s what that might mean for you — and four privacy settings that you might want to check today.
Update: On February 12, 2010, I published a new post that gives instructions for actually turning off Google Buzz. If you want to better understand the privacy implications of Buzz and to see some lesser steps you might take, please read on in this post.
Update: On February 13, 2010, Google announced that they would be making the privacy options for Buzz more explicit, including providing a more convenient button to disable buzz. I wrote about the good (and bad) parts of that announcement in this newer post.
GOOGLE BUZZ: THE SOCIAL NETWORK THAT HAS ASSIMILATED GMAIL
Yes, that’s right. Google Buzz is opt-out. When you log into your Gmail account, you’ll be confronted with this announcement:
But notice: It’s not asking if you want to join or activate Buzz. It’s asking if you want to learn more about it.
Even if you click “No” (or, in California-speak, “Nah, go to my inbox”), you are still enrolled in Buzz. The “Buzz” box still appears in your sidebar. The nice folks at Google just assume you want to be part of their new world where “[i]f you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”
Assume for just a moment that this concerns you. Assume, perhaps, that some other people might expect to be able to contact you in confidence — as a lawyer, a blogger, a journalist, or even (gasp) a friend. Assume that part of your professional responsibility is keeping the confidences of others.
This is not your first rodeo, so you click on the “Settings” menu at the top right of your Gmail. You expect to see be offered privacy options for this new Buzz service, but you see that there aren’t any. Although Google has integrated Buzz directly into your Gmail, it has hidden the controls (feeble as they are) somewhere else.
Here’s what this elusive new Buzz item might mean for your privacy. And here’s how to find (and change) a few settings to protect yourself.
REPURPOSING OLD DATA IN A WAY THAT FLOUTS OUR EXPECTATIONS OF PRIVACY
The problem here isn’t that Google is starting a new social network.1 We all know what social networks are; Google would probably be good at the engineering side of it. (I bet they haven’t even bothered to pick out their own iconic “fail” icon.)
The problem is how. Google has taken a couple of services that had basically clear privacy expectations — specifically, Gmail (private) and Google Profiles (public) — and combined them in a way that discloses previously private information that many people consider confidential.
For Buzz, Google’s engineers now guess at your social network based… wait for it… on who you have emailed most often. Here’s how its privacy policy describes this today:
When you first enter Google Buzz, to make the startup experience easier, we may automatically select people for you to follow based on the people you email and chat with most. Similarly, we may also suggest to others that they automatically follow you. You can review and edit the list of people you follow and block people from following you.
Having guessed at your social network, the Google engineers then share their findings with the world:
Your name, photo, and the list of people you follow and people following you will be displayed on your Google profile, which is publicly searchable on the Web. You may opt out of displaying the list of people following you and who you’re following on your profile.
If you are following someone who publicly displays their list of followers on their Google profile, then you will appear on that person’s public list. Likewise, if someone is following you and displays the list of people they follow on their profile, then you will appear on that public list.
So, a few days ago your email address book and list of recipients was private information. It would have been downright scandalous if someone had broken into Google and stolen it — even if just for a few dozen targeted accounts of Chinese dissidents.
But today, Google has used that same information to seed a new social network that by default makes these links publicly searchable? Wow.2
Update: If you want a real-world example of what this can mean, you might check out this post from Fugitivus. It has some more colorful language than I would use on this blog, but she’s earned it. The Buzz default settings revealed information about her to an abusive ex-husband. And there’s more. Because she also had an anonymous blog, and had forwarded those blog comments to her gmail account, Buzz also revealed her identity to some of the more frequent abusive commenters there.
Who knew that Google’s next “email killer” product would be aimed at killing trust in their own Gmail service?
Four tips to protect yourself and those who might expect some confidence from you
You do have a few switches to control this Buzzsaw. They’re just not where you expect them to be. And they might not do what you expect, either. There is no true “off” switch.
Here are the four settings I found this morning that seem to make a difference:3
1. WHEN YOU “TURN OFF” GOOGLE BUZZ, THAT DOESN’T ACTUALLY REMOVE YOUR INFORMATION FROM SEARCH RESULTS
You might have seen the article “How to do everything with Google Buzz (including turn it off)”. It’s a nice overview of the service. But, unfortunately, the tip it gives on how to “turn it off” actually just hides the updates so you can’t see them. Buzz is still active on your account, and your information is still shared.4
This setting is hidden in plain sight, down in the footer of the page with such frequently referenced items as your terms of service and their privacy policy. (It’s as if Google wanted to make sure the lawyers would have no excuse not to find this.)
If you regularly read the fine print on pharmaceutical ads, you might have noticed that this setting appears on a line that begins “Gmail view.” And it turns out that this “turn off buzz” switch does not actually turn off the Buzz service. Instead, it just turns your view of the service off. It hides updates… from yourself.
That’s probably not what you had in mind from an “off” switch. However you flip this switch, your follower/following information remains equally visible on your profile page for the world to see.
I could not find any switch that would actually disenroll me from Buzz. Once assimilated into the Buzz collective, there is no easy way to go back.
2. TO STOP SHARING YOUR OWN FOLLOWER/FOLLOWING LISTS, GO TO GOOGLE PROFILES
If you have ever created a Google Profile, your Buzz followers/following list is already displayed there by default to anyone else who is signed into their own Google account — even if they have no connection to you at all.
From your own profile page, you can choose to hide that list.
You have to choose “Edit Profile,” which brings up a whole mess of options, including this new checkbox near the top right:
Toggling this switch off at least does what you expect. It hides your follower/following information from your own profile page.
You might breathe a sigh of relief. People who view your profile will no longer be treated to a list of the people you email most often.
But you are still in the Buzz collective. And your name and smiling face may still appear on the other side of these follower/following connections. You may still be publicly linked to one of your clients, sources, or friend’s profile accounts, whether or not they expect it.
How do you help protect the confidences of others, if protecting confidences is part of your line of work?
3. IF YOU WANT TO HELP OUT YOUR CLIENTS, YOU MAY HAVE TO DISABLE YOUR OWN GOOGLE PROFILE
This is the tip that makes the least logical sense — but that had the biggest positive effect.
Update: I mentioned above that I wrote a new post with updated instructions for actually turning off Google Buzz. My experiments got me pretty close. It turns out to be a mix of deleting your Google profile entirely (not just turning off display of your “full name” or making it private), followed by my step 4 (deleting all connections), followed last by my step 1 (actually hitting “turn off buzz”). You should read that new post if you want to completely disable Buzz. The rest of this post explains some of the lesser steps you might consider, and what effect they seem to have.
After I did steps 1 and 2 above — turning “off” Buzz and disabling the follower/following list from showing in my own profile — I was disturbed to see that I still showed up in some friends’ public profiles.
Why is that? Because the Google Buzz system appears to distinguish between people with a public profile who choose to “share” their full name and those who do not.
By going back to my own profile settings and toggling this switch to the off position, I managed to remove my name from the list of people who would be publicly displayed on someone else’s profile page.
Not obvious. But it works (for now).5
4. (BONUS!) IF YOU WANT TO REALLY MAKE SURE THINGS ARE NAILED DOWN, YOU HAVE TO MANUALLY DELETE THE “FOLLOWING” SELECTIONS GOOGLE HAS MADE FOR YOU BY DEFAULT
I was originally going to stop with step 3, but when demonstrating this to someone else… I found another leak. 6
Although I had done the three tips above, I had not made any changes to the follower/following list that Google created for me automatically. It was hidden, but still there.
I demonstrated these tips to someone who happened to be on my “following” list and… they could still see me. That’s not too terrible. But they could still see me listed on other people’s profiles, too — even profiles with which they were not otherwise linked. So, if they stumbled upon (or sought out) one of those profile pages, they could get information about my connection with that person, even though I had chosen not to share my own connections and even though I had told the system not to make my information publicly searchable. 7
So here’s the final tip for today: Anyone on your “following” list — even if Google put them there automatically — gets access to private information about your other connections.8
Update: I’ve now had a chance to check if your “followers” also get access to this information. It turns out that they do.
That might be a reasonable choice for a social network to make. But not for an email service like Gmail.
So, if it’s your business to respect the confidences of others, you should prune down that list (perhaps to zero).
And, even if you decide to use Buzz in a limited way, you should be very wary of following people just because they might send out a funny update or two. This isn’t Twitter, where the price of following might be a spammy DM. This is the Buzz collective, where you are not in control and your information may not be your own.
- Business riddle: Google basically prints money. Facebook famously doesn’t. If Facebook has been unable to make money even at its own enormous scale, why does Google want to get into this business? Is it really worth destroying your enormous franchise value in email and business-related apps to do so? [↩]
- If you think about it, Google’s choice to make it just the people you email “most” cuts both ways in privacy terms. Sure, fewer contacts information is exposed. But the selection gives away information about your behavior in regard to those contacts, which might even be more sensitive. Who are you to deny what Google says about you? [↩]
- I tried these settings out from a few accounts, checking to see how the system behaves. Some of these options or their effects may change. If you notice a change or something that I just got wrong, please let me know, and I’ll update the post. [↩]
- It’s hardly the author’s fault. Google is the one who called this an “off” button instead of a “hide” button. In trying to attack Facebook, Google seems to have also followed the same strategy of fragmenting and hiding user privacy controls. [↩]
- Of course, this doesn’t really give me more privacy. I still have a public Google profile (and I don’t see an obvious way to delete that) — it just appears under my Google account name instead. And it probably doesn’t take a cluster of NSA computers to figure out the connection between your account name and your real name. If you chose an account name like I did, it probably just takes a space bar, a period key, or maybe an underscore. [↩]
- I suspect there are more. Please let me know, and especially let me know if you find solutions. [↩]
- Curiously, they could also see my “full name” on my profile page, even though I had told the profile service not to display it. This may just be a bug. It may be a feature. Or Google might not have decided yet what to call it. [↩]
- Your “followers” do, too. What I saw was based on people I was still “following.” I didn’t test if people merely on a “follower” list also get access to more information. It doesn’t seem like they should, but then again, it doesn’t seem like those on the “following” list should, either. [↩]
Google content-filter patent about copyright, not censorship
Ars Technica: February 17, 2010
Google has been awarded a patent that describes a software method for selectively restricting the availability of content on the basis of access privileges and geographical location. On the surface, it may look like this patent covers techniques for censoring politically sensitive content in specific countries—a practice that Google has recently spoken out against in its ongoing feud with China. A closer look at the patent’s claims, however, shows that it has little to do with censorship and may actually relate to the company’s controversial book scanning initiative.
Patent #7,664,751, “Variable user interface based on document access privileges,” submitted to the patent office in September, 2004 and was awarded to Google on Tuesday. Like most patents, it is written to be very broad, but it identifies some specific use cases. The major case it covers is a system where the availability of scanned documents, such as books and magazines, is constrained to selected portions or restricted entirely based on access privileges that are derived from copyright law and other related factors. In cases where access is limited or restricted, the patent explains that the software could supply the user with links to buy the full document.
How copyright law necessitates location-based filtering
Most countries are party to the Berne Convention, an international treaty that set the groundwork for modern copyright law. It’s important to understand, however, that the Berne Convention and subsequent agreements of a similar nature merely define a set of minimum standards. Individual countries can establish longer copyright terms or enforce additional restrictions. Many countries, including the United States, allow copyright to last longer than the minimum that is mandated by international treaties.
A book that is considered part of the public domain in one country may still be covered under copyright law in another country. The lack of consistency in copyright law between nations has raised some really peculiar issues for content distributors. For example, Project Gutenberg Australia freely offers the full text of books by Charles Williams (my favorite author) even though the same text can’t be published on the main Project Gutenberg website.
Different countries also have completely different ways of defining and protecting Fair Use rights. It may be entirely permissible to publish properly attributed excerpts of considerable length in some countries while others would view the same behavior as highly damaging and criminal.
These issue can arguably be attributed to the general brittleness of modern copyright law and the trend towards blatantly unreasonable copyright extension, but that’s not something that can be fixed overnight on a global scale. Attempts at international harmonization of copyright seem to tilt towards the Machiavellian end of the spectrum, making it worse for everybody instead of better. For now, companies like Google that want to publish content and make it available to an international audience on the Internet have no choice but to play by the rules that have been established by individual governments.
We’ve already seen some major friction between Google and various publishing companies in countries where the laws are somewhat different. Google is working on negotiating a settlement with authors in the United States to legitimize its book scanning effort, but it lost a lawsuit in France where a court declared that the program is categorically a violation of the country’s copyright law. Similarly, a Belgian court banned Google from indexing news that is published by 20 companies in the country.
The specific technology described in Google’s patent enables the search giant to deal with the inconsistencies in regional copyright law by programmatically managing access control in a manner that is more conducive to compliance with its legal obligations as a content distributor.
Patent questions
The validity of Google’s patent and the possibility of prior art is a matter that is open to debate. The question of whether patents on software are valid could soon be addressed by the Supreme Court, which is evaluating a lower court decision that partially shot down the legal basis on which business method patents are rationalized.
The fact that Google was awarded the patent likely means that Project Gutenberg and other content distributors who face the same kind of copyright dilemmas as Google may not be able to implement similar systems without licensing the patent. It’s unclear, however, if Google would even consider enforcing the patent in the event that it is infringed. The company has stated in the past that its patent portfolio is for defensive purposes, a position that is supported so far by its actions.
Regardless of the patent’s validity or substance, the underlying problem that the described technology can solve is a very real issue for Google and a number of other companies that are struggling to contend with copyright chaos.
Google censors Youtube nasties
But forgets about mobile devices
The Inquirer: February 11, 2010
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1591577/google-censors-youtube-nasties
ONLINE ADVERTISING BROKER Google has finally enabled a ‘safety mode’ on its non-profit video site, Youtube.
Launched yesterday, Youtube’s safety mode will allow users with Google or Youtube accounts to only view content that’s deemed to be wholesome and abides by Youtube’s Community Guidelines. Of course the problem with this is that you will have to trust that the filtering system is up-to-date with the latest content.
Given that Youtube receives 20 hours of video every minute there is a better than average chance that the filters won’t be able to do real-time censorship. Google itself is saying that “no filtering system is 100 [per cent] accurate.”
Youtube’s safety mode will not only block specific videos but search queries may return no results depending on the query that has been entered. The user will be informed that the Youtube overlords have rejected their query or curtailed the results within safety mode.
Other safety mode changes will include video comments being hidden by default, although viewing will be possible with any naughty words hidden with asterisks.
Google, seemingly thinking that only the technically infirm use Youtube released a patronising video outlining the features of what is essentially an opt-in censorship programme.
It is not known what percentage of all content will be flagged as not suitable for safety mode but one suspects a hefty chunk regardless of how liberal the censors are.
For Google, censoring any content is a touchy subject. Given that, safety mode is something that most if not all parents will support.
However the greatest problem will be that Youtube videos can be viewed outside of its website. With the Youtube applications on Android and Iphone devices not supporting safety mode it doesn’t look like it’ll be too hard for kids to circumvent this half-baked attempt at filtering out video nasties.
