Trump likely overstepped authority with TikTok ban, judge rules

TikTok said the White House can’t do that. The judge says TikTok is probably right.

TikTok logo next to inverted US flag.

Enlarge / TikTok's US fate is up in the air, but at least you can still download and patch it. (credit: SOPA Images | LightRocket | Getty Images)

President Donald Trump's attempt to ban TikTok from operating inside the United States probably exceeds the authority the president has to do such things, a federal judge has ruled.

TikTok narrowly avoided being removed from app stores last night when Judge Carl Nichols of the US District Court for DC issued an injunction late yesterday requiring the government to pause on its ban. TikTok got its reprieve, but the terms of the order (PDF) were sealed until midday today.

To meet the standard for an injunction, Nichols explained, TikTok basically needed to prove four things to his satisfaction. The first factor, however, is the most important: TikTok needed to prove its case is "likely to succeed on the merits." In plain English, that means: is it going to win its lawsuit against the administration? And the answer, Nichols determined, is probably yes, because the actions the administration took "likely exceed the lawful bounds" of the law under which those actions were taken.

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Russia Joins WIPO Project to Block Pirate Revenue But There’s Still No Transparency

After two years of development the World Intellectual Property Organisation launched its BRIP database in 2019 with the aim of strangling advertising revenue to pirate sites. Russia says it will now contribute its resources to the program but which sites are blacklisted overall will remain a mystery due to a complete lack of transparency.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Websites of all kinds generally need a steady stream of revenue to keep them online. Advertisers, sponsors and affiliate schemes all play a part and the position is generally no different for pirate sites.

That being said, by their very nature pirate sites have a more limited number of options when it comes to advertisers.

Years ago, many would use platforms such as Google’s Adsense or similar mechanisms operated by various reputable third-party agencies but when advertising for mainstream brands began appearing alongside pirated content, copyright holders were quick to point out that household names should not be funding illegal activity.

This resulted in pressure on agencies around the world to stop doing indirect business with pirate platforms, with various coalitions creating their own pirate site ‘blacklists’ so that known pirate players could be screened out as potential advertising partners.

WIPO’s ‘Building Respect for Intellectual Property’ Database

In 2017, the United Nation’s World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) threw its proposals into the mix with its BRIP (Building Respect for Intellectual Property) database. The plan, which came to fruition in 2019, would see “Authorized Contributors” and “Authorized Users” from WIPO Member States and the advertising sectors building a list of websites that are known to infringe copyright, so they could be avoided.

Early contributors included Italian telecom regulator AGCOM and KCOPA, the Korea Copyright Protection Agency. Earlier this year it was reported that Brazil was also cooperating in the project but information on precisely who else is involved is currently scarce, barring the latest new entrant.

Russia Joins the Renamed WIPO ALERT Database

According to Russian telecoms regulator Roscomnadzor, Russia has also decided to throw its weight behind the scheme following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding earlier this month after a year-and-a-half of negotiations with WIPO.

“Roscomnadzor and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) have signed a Memorandum on the provision of information to the WIPO ALERT database,” the announcement reads, referring to the new name for BRIP.

“The WIPO ALERT database is a mechanism that allows WIPO Member States and their institutions to share lists of infringing sites in order to discourage advertisers from placing advertisements on such sites.

“Roscomnadzor will provide for placement in the WIPO ALERT database information about sites on the Internet, on which information containing objects of copyright and (or) related rights have been repeatedly and illegally posted.”

Who is Participating and What Are Their Criteria?

The above announcement by Russia indicates that the country’s participation in WIPO ALERT is based on its established guidelines for local site-blocking. Sites that are reported multiple times due to the placement of copyrighted content on their platforms appear to be prime candidates for inclusion in the WIPO ALERT database. This is in line with the published aim of the project.

“WIPO ALERT is a secure, online platform to which authorized bodies in WIPO member states can upload details of websites or apps which have been determined to infringe copyright according to national rules,” it reads.

What we can conclude from “national rules” is that sites can be added for ad-blocking when a local law is breached but, thus far, and based on information currently made public, participants other than Russia aren’t so clear on their parameters.

In respect of AGCOM, for example, the regulator merely states that the memorandum it signed allows it to contribute to a list of websites “compiled at national level that violate authors’ rights.” (pdf)

The System Still Lacks Transparency

Visitors to the WIPO ALERT portal hoping to learn more are given very little information to go on.

“Advertisers, advertising agencies and their technical service providers can apply to become authorized users of WIPO ALERT in order to access aggregated lists of infringing websites from around the world,” the site reads.

“They can use this information in their automated advertising systems to avoid placing advertisements on such sites. In this way, they can avoid subsidizing copyright infringement and protect their brands from the negative reputational effect of association with illegal activities.”

That sounds effective in theory but who is checking for errors and overreach, and who is responsible for ensuring that everything is kept up to date? Not the WIPO, that much is certain.

“WIPO does not assess whether any website is infringing and does not take any responsibility for the contents of the national lists hosted on the WIPO ALERT platform,” the organization writes.

So if a site gets added to a list erroneously or even maliciously (we only need to turn to Google’s Transparency Report on DMCA notices to see thousands of instances of both), how can that be rectified? The WIPO offers the following advice:

“Warning – any concerns as to the inclusion or omission of a website from a list must be pursued with the national agency concerned,” it states.

The problems here are obvious. There is no public list of “national agencies” that are able to contribute to the project and even when those are known, they won’t share their lists with the public. This means that it’s not only impossible for parties to examine the lists for errors but owners of domains that are wrongly included will not even know they are being blacklisted. All they will see is a reduced ability to generate revenue from advertising.

Avoiding Pirate Sites is Understandable But Business Works Both Ways

That many if not most advertisers would prefer for their brands not to appear alongside pages of pirated content is completely understandable. Advertising is all about perception and in the same way that big companies wouldn’t like their carefully cultivated imagery appearing alongside crazy conspiracy theorists on YouTube, association with pirated copies of Tenet or Mulan would probably be a no-no too.

However, some companies operating in the anti-piracy space, hired by copyright holders that are comfortable with their standards, are just as comfortable blacklisting news articles that simply report on leaks of Tenet as they labeling the BBC a piracy portal. Or, as we revealed this weekend, labeling a French ISP and phone manufacturer Huawei as running two of the world’s Top 50 piracy portals.

Not placing advertising on these sites, for example, could mean lucrative advertising deals lost, with brands, agencies, and potential platforms all coming out poorer.

Unfortunately, however, those who run national advertising blacklists such as the UK’s PIPCU (Infringing Website List) and AGCOM, for example, have absolutely no intention of making these available to the public. Why not is a complete mystery since all of the major pirate sites are public knowledge due to Google’s Transparency Report and the invaluable Lumen Database.

That leaves the possibilities that third-party scrutiny is undesirable, either because contributors prefer not to justify their decisions and/or mistakes could prove embarrassing and undermine credibility. Nevertheless, it would make for more accurate blacklists, which must be the goal overall, surely?

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Amazon Prime Day was just announced, and some deals have already started

Did you really think Amazon was going to let 2020 slip by without a Prime Day?

Amazon Prime Day was just announced, and some deals have already started

Enlarge

Amazon Prime Day has officially been announced for October 13 and 14 of this year, and though it's later than usual, Amazon is making sure to put some early deals in place to get buyers in the shopping mood in the lead-up.

It's not just your typical swarm of Amazon devices seeing early discounts, though there's much of that, too. Amazon says it’s focusing on small businesses this year, offering incentives to shop at them on Amazon before Prime Day, and making it easier to shop by region or owner of the local business. The company is also offering a $10 reimbursement in the form of a Prime Day credit for any purchases of $10 or more made with eligible small businesses from now through October 12. From this landing page, you can look through businesses by their local region or whether they are woman- or Black-owned, for instance.

In fact, it's a bigger Prime Day party than ever before, with Turkey and Brazil now included in the shopping holiday for the first time.

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Daily Deals (9-28-2020)

Amazon Prime Day was delayed this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Amazon has announced that its annual sales holiday will go on… just a little later than usual. Prime Day is scheduled for October 13 and 14, but the company is already offe…

Amazon Prime Day was delayed this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Amazon has announced that its annual sales holiday will go on… just a little later than usual. Prime Day is scheduled for October 13 and 14, but the company is already offering some early deals to Prime members. For example, you can […]

The post Daily Deals (9-28-2020) appeared first on Liliputing.

YouTube celebrates Deaf Awareness Week by killing crowd-sourced captions

500,000 signatures aren’t stopping YouTube from shutting down accessibility feature.

Today's the day YouTube is killing its "Community Contributions" feature for videos, which let content creators crowdsource captions and subtitles for their videos. YouTube announced the move back in July, which triggered a community outcry from the deaf, hard of hearing, and fans of foreign media, but it does not sound like the company is relenting. In one of Google's all-time poor timing decisions, YouTube is killing the feature just two days after the International Week of the Deaf, which is the last full week in September.

Once enabled by a channel owner, the Community Contributions feature would let viewers caption or translate a video and submit it to the channel for approval. YouTube currently offers machine-transcribed subtitles that are often full of errors, and if you also need YouTube to take a second pass at the subtitles for machine-translation, they've probably lost all meaning by the time they hit your screen. The Community Caption feature would load up those machine-written subtitles as a starting point and allow the user to make corrections and add text the machine-transcription doesn't handle well, like transcribed sound cues for the deaf and hard of hearing.

YouTube says it's killing crowd-source subtitles due to spam and low usage. "While we hoped Community Contributions would be a wide-scale, community-driven source of quality translations for Creators," the company wrote, "it’s rarely used and people continue to report spam and abuse." The community does not seem to agree with this assessment, since a petition immediately popped up asking YouTube to reconsider, and so far half a million people have signed. "Removing community captions locks so many viewers out of the experience,"  the petition reads. "Community captions ensured that many videos were accessible that otherwise would not be."

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Google says Android 12 will better support third-party app stores

Don’t like the Google Play Store and Google’s policies for how developers can use it to distribute their apps? Then you don’t have to use it. One of the differences between Android and iOS is that Google officially lets users (or pho…

Don’t like the Google Play Store and Google’s policies for how developers can use it to distribute their apps? Then you don’t have to use it. One of the differences between Android and iOS is that Google officially lets users (or phone makers) install third-party app stores, while Apple does not. Now Google says the […]

The post Google says Android 12 will better support third-party app stores appeared first on Liliputing.

USA: Putin regt Kooperation im Internet an

Kurz vor der Präsidentschaftswahl in den USA schlägt Putin eine Zusammenarbeit bei der Internetsicherheit vor – auch bei Wahlen. (Russland, Malware)

Kurz vor der Präsidentschaftswahl in den USA schlägt Putin eine Zusammenarbeit bei der Internetsicherheit vor - auch bei Wahlen. (Russland, Malware)