Category: Digital Culture

Why is Fight For The Future Rocking Against the TPP?  

Rock the TPPI will admit it right now. I have not read the full text of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement.  And I don’t intend to.  I also do not have even encyclopedia-entry knowledge about all of the other 11 countries involved in the TPP and do not have more than a basic understanding of global trade.  Absent this information, the honest answer is that I have no earthly idea what the full scope of consequences might be of either passing or not passing the TPP.

What I have just said about myself applies to nearly the entire American public. And it very likely applies to the folks at Fight for the Future, who are now promoting a concert event called Rock Against the TPP.  Here’s their description of the largest international trade deal in history:

“…an anti-democratic deal between 12 countries that was negotiated in complete secrecy by government officials and hundreds of corporate lobbyists. If it becomes law, the TPP would be the largest deal of its kind in history, and it poses a grave threat to good-paying jobs, internet freedom, the environment, access to medicine, food safety, and the future of freedom of expression.”

I have written previously about the false claim that TPP can have an ill-effect on free speech and that the “secrecy” thing is blown out of proportion.  (As indicated above, the full text has been freely available since early in the year, but nobody is going to read it.)

The first criticism I have about FFTF’s declaration is that this organization is not functionally concerned with good paying jobs, the environment, access to medicine, or food safety.  Individuals within the group may personally care about these things and have certain related knowledge, but nobody who works there is an international policy expert in these areas; and addressing these issues is not part of the mission of the organization.  Fight for the Future is, in principle, a “digital rights” group—concerned with “internet freedom,” a concept that is itself a little vague for my tastes, but that’s another conversation.

“Act Now! Or Things Might Stay Very Much the Same!”

That doesn’t exactly stir one to action, but it’s an honest distillation of “digital rights” groups’ complaints about the TPP with regard to “internet freedom” and free speech. This is because the part of the treaty they see as a threat are the IP provisions, which do not actually have any effect on the status of free speech online for the trading partners.

And even confined to its wheelhouse, Fight for the Future’s concern for “internet freedom” in the context of the TPP typically glosses over the complexity of interrelated issues, raising this one paradox I can’t help but repeat:  You cannot have internet freedom without global trade because you cannot have devices that connect you to the internet without global trade.  Ain’t that a bitch?

I mean I hate to be a buzzkill, but there’s a lot of environmental hazard and unsafe, unfair labor involved with producing the computers and smart phones and tablets FFTF is using to rally people to Rock Against the TPP.  So, the hard question is this:   Can we privileged Americans say with confidence that this trade deal only exacerbates these problems rather than makes progress toward improvements for workers and environmental policies in partner nations? I can’t.  Can you?  And, without this level of understanding, it seems cynically irresponsible to get people into a lather about their right of free speech—a right that is not threatened at all—while potentially denying a step forward for someone halfway around the world, who lives in pretty deplorable conditions.

Still, the economic and environmental concerns are not dismissible.  Here’s a quote cited by the organization Citizens Trade, which is linked to by FFTF:

CWA president Chris Shelton: “Even a cursory review demonstrates how this trade deal fails working families. It forces U.S. workers to compete with the 65-cent an hour wages of Vietnamese workers and the slave labor employed in Malaysia. It allows multinational corporations to challenge environmental, financial, consumer and other regulations through international tribunals – and outside the court systems of member countries. It pays lip service to addressing real concerns about currency manipulation that costs American jobs and leads to more jobs being sent offshore. And it allies the U.S. with countries that abuse their own citizens, including Brunei, Vietnam and Malaysia.”

I don’t want to support any of that.  Of course there’s a lot in that statement begging further research, but on the last point, for example, about allying with countries that abuse their citizens, here’s some sample text from the TPP:

Article 19.3: Labour Rights

1. Each Party shall adopt and maintain in its statutes and regulations, and practices thereunder, the following rights as stated in the ILO Declaration 3, 4:

(a) freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;

(b) the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour;

(c) the effective abolition of child labour and, for the purposes of this Agreement, a prohibition on the worst forms of child labour; and

(d) the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

So, if ratifying this trade agreement could reverse precedent disenfranchisement of minority workers in Malaysia, I don’t necessarily want to rock against it either.  So, which do we believe?  More to the point, how can we know without thoroughly digging into the laws, economics, and conditions of people in Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam, etc.?  Fight for the Future seems to trade on a very American-centric notion that an “open internet” is all that’s needed for the rest of the world to become more democratic and socially just.

The labor-related critics cited by Citizens Trade—Steelworkers, Machinists, CWA, and the Teamsters—have an immediate, American-jobs interest in fighting against free trade. This is a valid concern to say the least, but it also makes these parties rather strange bedfellows with an organization like Fight for the Future, whose anti-copyright agenda is not exactly supportive of domestic labor. Teamsters, for example, do a lot of work for the motion picture industry. And FFTF’s criticism, based solely on the premise that copyright enforcement is in conflict with free speech, is both unsound and wants to ignore the adverse effects of criminal-enterprise infringement of works like motion pictures.

Although certain pundits like to point to the total revenues of the American film industry as “proof” that large-scale piracy does no harm, the evidence is clear that investment in middle-market production is wavering as a direct result of piracy’s eroding margins for these products.*  This can lead to fewer total projects being made with full budgets and union crews, which can lead to fewer teamsters being hired to support film and television production.  Likewise, many members of the CWA have a direct interest in protecting copyrights around the world, so how is FFTF’s anti-IP agenda not a threat to those jobs in addition to any concerns regarding other aspects of the TPP?

In the end, I think it’s very tough to say whether or not we could, or would even want to, put the global-trade genie back in the bottle.  What is not hard to say is that Fight for the Future’s gasping over the prospect that TPP would unify copyright terms among the partner nations and promote measures for enforcement is a naive, anti-progressive stance that ignores the complexities of the real world. Former Canadian diplomat Hugh Stephens describes a hypothetical—though not impossible—scenario in which Taiwan is invited to join the TPP, which would diversify its economic relationships, making it less dependent on China.  Meanwhile, what do “digital rights” activists think is more likely to motivate a nation like China to migrate toward a more open society with an uncensored internet—rock concerts or global trade?

With regard to American jobs, there’s no getting past the fact that certain sectors have suffered from free trade deals. In response, I’m with those who say there are jobs to be had by investing in domestic infrastructure; it’s long overdue for renovation and cannot be outsourced.  Maybe somebody should rock that.

*Although there is new investment in middle-market works predicated on Netflix-like models, it is too soon to know how this market will evolve to remain sustainable.  It is also equally vulnerable to piracy.

IP Skeptic Doctorow Notices a Problem

Last week, Cory Doctorow reported on Boing Boing that Amazon has a growing counterfeit products problem on its hands due to a change in company policy that allows Chinese suppliers to sell direct on the platform, bypassing domestic importers. If accurate, the issue itself is not very surprising. What is surprising is that Doctorow does not acknowledge—at least not in this article—that the counterfeit outbreak he describes is an inevitable result of the anti-IP agenda he has personally supported for years.

At some point, one must toss that copy of The Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace into the digital dumpster and accept that the internet is not a magical cornucopia whose bounty will flow only so long as it operates beyond the legal limits of the physical world. To the contrary, the virtual increasingly has significant influence on the tangible. Doctorow describes the following:

“In late 2015, there were a spate of warnings about knockoff sex toys on Amazon made from toxic materials that you really didn’t want to stick inside your body. Now this has metastasized into every Amazon category. Sometimes its clothes and other goods that have weird sizing, colors, or poor construction. Sometimes its goods that generate no complaints, but are priced so low that the legit manufacturers can’t compete, and end up pulling out of Amazon or going bust.

Or it can be the worst of both worlds: super-cheap goods that make it impossible for legit manufacturers to compete, coupled with low-quality knockoffs that generate strings of one-star reviews from pissed off customers, meaning that even if the fakes were chased off the service, the sales will never come back.”

Sound familiar? Doctorow observes that Amazon is making money on transactions that may defraud—or even endanger—consumers while simultaneously causing permanent economic harm to legitimate suppliers. Isn’t that what many of us have been saying would happen when IP rights are not enforced online—that the “free culture” fiesta would extend beyond the supposed “harmlessness” of media piracy and eventually manifest as physical goods that can maim, poison, or kill people? Or at least just rip them off?

Unfortunately, the broader battle over IP protection on internet platforms has been distorted by a naive belief in the harmlessness of pirating entertainment media and the assumption that IP only serves the big conglomerates who produce those works. This feeds a sense that IP in general is just a “protectionist” regime for entrenched corporations to slow innovation. When it comes to physical goods, though, suddenly people begin to notice that protecting IP happens to protect consumers. This is why for instance trademark infringement is not a minor transgression. The knock-off Polo shirt won’t get anyone killed, but the knock-off Graco car seat certainly could; and when one distribution service like Amazon is vying to be the “Everything Store,” the possibility for widespread hazard becomes clear.

Presumably, Amazon will recognize the potential loss of consumer confidence if their counterfeit problem grows. The company could take mitigating measures akin to the effective, anti-fraud practices employed by eBay, which weighed heavily in its favor in a 2002 litigation with Tiffany over fraudulent products being sold on that platform. That Doctorow writes the following, however, is the real hypocrisy that needs to be addressed:

“Amazon is bending over backwards to refund customers who get bad fakes, but either can’t or won’t stem the tide of fakes themselves (I run into counterfeit editions of my books on Amazon all the time). It may be that it’s more profitable to offer refunds to customers who get bad products than it is to police the millions of SKUs that are pouring in now that Chinese industry has a direct pipeline to Amazon’s customers.”

Doctorow is criticizing Amazon for tackling the counterfeit problem one infringement at a time while failing to take broader measures to “police” its own platform to “stem the tide.” Is that not a familiar refrain copyright holders have been singing about mass infringement of their works on platforms like YouTube? I think it is. Either these platforms are under the control of their owners or they’re not. Either we want a digital market that protects suppliers and consumers, or we don’t. And we can’t have the former without shedding this naive premise that the technology itself obviates the need for intellectual property enforcement, or that IP is exclusively a barrier to access, information, or innovative services.

This subject actually refers back to the first article I wrote about any of these issues—one that appeared in December 2011 in Stars & Stripes supporting SOPA/PIPA because of their associated provisions designed to mitigate counterfeit products entering the military supply chain. You remember SOPA, right? Certainly, the cadre of “digital rights” activists won’t let you forget it as they chronically insist that all proposals to protect any kind of IP online are basically SOPA in disguise. (See Guide to Critiquing Copyright in the Digital Age).

Likely, nobody remembers that Tittle II of SOPA contained anti-counterfeiting provisions as did a companion bill to PIPA called the Combatting Military Counterfeits Act, authored by Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). These provisions and proposed amendments would not be protecting US consumers from Amazon-purchased counterfeits more than the existing statutes (Title 18) already do, but the bills did go further to protect against certain types of counterfeiting, and both bills expanded the principle that trafficking in counterfeits online poses a serious threat to consumer safety.

As Doctorow’s observations forecast, someone’s eventually going to get hurt. And unfortunately, that’s often what it takes for people to demand any kind of action. Or we could change the conversation before that happens.

Prison for password sharing? Not likely.

After a ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a number of blogs and articles appeared with headlines announcing that it is now a federal crime if, for instance, your kid uses your Netflix password.  While that kind of headline is good for traffic and buzz, it’s also typically exaggerated and misleading—at least insofar as this recent decision is concerned.

At the heart of the matter is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which has been sharply criticized for years by a number of civil liberties advocates who focus on digital-age issues.  The CFAA may also be referred to generically as the anti-hacking law, and there is perhaps legitimate concern that the language in the statute is overly broad and may therefore be abused by a capricious prosecutor to indict people who commit minor offenses (or non-offenses) under a law written to address serious cyber crimes.

The appeals court decision that ignited the recent flurry of headlines, United States v Nosal, concerns David Nosal, a former employee of the executive search firm Korn/Ferry. After being dismissed from the firm, Nosal “convinced some of  his  former  colleagues  who  were  still  working  for Korn/Ferry  to  help  him  start  a  competing  business.  The employees used  their  log-in  credentials  to  download  source lists, names and contact information from a confidential database  on  the  company’s computer,  and  then  transferred  that information to Nosal.”  This is a partial description of facts as stated in the Ninth Circuit’s en banc opinion issued April 2012 in the same case.

There appears to be no dispute in the matter of Nosal’s criminal liability under several other statutes regarding his unauthorized access of Korn/Ferry’s protected data, but the appeal pertaining to CFAA hinges on what critics—and at least some judges—feel is ambiguity over the meaning of “authority” to access a computer.  Because one of Nosal’s former colleagues still had credentials to log into the firm’s computers and because she voluntarily shared those credentials, can Nosal then be charged with violation of CFAA?  Does authority come from the credential holder or the computer owner?  Right there is where civil libertarians and dissenting judges say the ambiguity in the language could jeopardize you and me and every other citizen who voluntarily shares a password with a friend or family member for innocuous access to our personal accounts.  From the EFF …

“Nosal’s colleagues had the authority of an authorized user, the current employee who lent her credentials. Thus, if “authority” can come from the account holder—as with a wife who lends her bank credentials to her husband to pay a bill, a college student who uses a parent’s Hulu or Amazon password, or someone who checks Facebook for a sick friend—then Nosal and his colleagues did not violate the CFAA.”

I wouldn’t call the distinction irrelevant, but neither would I call this case a particularly good reason for everyone to overreact, which has no doubt already happened on social media threads everywhere.  The employee with “authorized” access to Korn/Ferry’s database may well have given her permission to Nosal and others to use her login credentials, but that in itself was a criminal violation and a permission she had no “authority” to grant under any circumstances.  The majority opinion from the court is extensive on this point and argues that its interpretation of “authority” is both clear and consistent with sister circuit court decisions in precedent cases.

Meanwhile, even a very narrow interpretation of “authority” in Nosal’s case is a far cry from comparing these circumstances to the fact that I have a Netflix account which enables up to four devices simultaneous access to the service and that one of these may be used by my college-student son.  That’s what Netflix expects a family to do with an account that allows multi-device access.  Moreover, unlike Nosal’s “inside woman” at Korn/Ferry, I do have authority to give permission to a friend or spouse to log into my Facebook account.  Neither Facebook nor the federal government can mandate that the account holder has to be the individual who types in the credentials—to say nothing of ever proving such evidence—so it seems like gratuitous hyperbole for EFF and other critics to compare these everyday examples to Nosal.  Still, the three-judge panel had one dissenting opinion, which the EFF describes as follows:

“While the majority opinion said that the facts of this case “bear little resemblance” to the kind of password sharing that people often do, Judge Reinhardt’s dissent notes that it fails to provide an explanation of why that is. Using an analogy in which a woman uses her husband’s user credentials to access his bank account to pay bills, Judge Reinhardt noted: “So long as the wife knows that the bank does not give her permission to access its servers in any manner, she is in the same position as Nosal and his associates.” As a result, although the majority says otherwise, the court turned anyone who has ever used someone else’s password without the approval of the computer owner into a potential felon.”

Indeed, we may now be a nation of felons, and if this is so, then Congress better get on that.  But the fact that we are all guilty is the first reason we might want to calm down a bit before reacting to those scary headlines and getting in a big sweat about it.  Also, while I lack the credentials to argue with an appeals court judge, I’m going to a little because the wife in Judge Reinhardt’s example does have her husband’s permission to access the bank account, and the husband has the authority to grant her that permission. Judge Reinhardt knows this, though, and his point is that the statute ought to reflect the distinction between this common, family banking example and the Nosal case in which the individual with the credentials did not have “authority” to grant access.  Reinhardt writes the following in his dissenting opinion:

“The majority [opinion] does not provide, nor do I see, a workable line which separates the consensual password sharing in this case from the consensual password sharing of millions of legitimate account holders, which may also be contrary to the policies of system owners. There simply is no limiting principle in the majority’s world of lawful and unlawful password sharing.”

Perhaps Congress will need to review CFAA, but it seems simple enough to observe that “authority” to grant access will be predicated on the relationship between the login credential holder and the data being accessed. Korn/Ferry owns 100% of the data on its computer servers, its employees may only access that data under the conditions and permissions of the firm, and this access may be revoked at the sole discretion of the firm without question.  In short, nothing in the database belongs to any of the employee/users, who therefore have no authority ever to share access with anyone. In such a scenario, only the computer owner can have the “authority” to grant access.

This is very different from the relationship between a bank and a customer vis-a-vis one’s own account information pertaining to one’s own money. The bank owns the servers and the systems just like the bank owns the vault, but the customer owns the account information and assets in the account and has full discretion to use the information or assets as he sees fit, while the bank has very restricted authority to access or exploit either the data or the assets under management. Reinhardt’s comparison might be more compelling if the wife in the scenario were cheating on her husband and so gave the login credentials to a dashing third party to drain the bank account so they could run off to the Caribbean together.  In this soap opera, could said dashing third party (DTP) be indicted under CFAA in addition to other criminal charges? Arguably, the wife had more authority to grant access to the DTP than the Korn/Ferry employee had to grant access to Nosal, so I imagine CFAA would be an over-reach in this situation.

In the case of a Facebook account, the “ownership” question remains a bit vague. Many social media companies lay claim in their Terms of Service to “ownership” of every word and image we share on their platforms, but does that make these companies the “owners” of the data in the same way that Korn/Ferry owns its data?  I would argue it does not, especially since none of our shared social media data can be called “private” or Facebook’s “trade secrets.” As with the banking example, a social media account involves a shared “authority” to access based on the relationship between the data and the account holder; and this would seem to void any assumed violation of CFAA.  Regardless, it will likely be years before these questions are officially resolved, but I wouldn’t lose years of sleep in the meantime worrying about felony charges for common password sharing.