Everything Online Cannot Be Speech:  The Equustek Story

Suppose you invent something.  A box that makes bitter vegetables taste like candy so kids will eat them. You call it KandyKale.  Then, along comes an imposter, who steals your tech and infringes your intellectual property, and then sets up a bunch of websites that hijack the customers looking for your product in order to sell them the KandeeKale knock-off, which they produced by stealing from you in the first place. Not only would you sue the KandeeKale operators, but you might ask the court to order a search giant like Google to delist the websites while your litigation ensues.

That pretty much sums up the nature of the complaint by Canadian tech manufacturer Equustek against Datalink, which allegedly stole Equustek’s trade secrets then took the counterfeit business “virtual” after a Vancouver court ordered Datalink to stop operating in the province.  As a normal matter of procedure in its fight against the alleged counterfeiters, Equustek sought, and was granted, injunctive relief by a British Columbia court in June of 2015. This included an order that Google de-index, on a worldwide basis, the sites dedicated to selling the counterfeit products.  The decision was upheld by the Canadian Supreme Court.

Google has asked a California district court to enjoin the enforcement of the Canadian order in the U.S., principally on the grounds that the Canadian court “offends” the First Amendment and the Communications Decency Act under U.S. law.  According to the motion filed by Google, Equustek states that it cannot afford to fight the search giant’s appeal in U.S. court, which is both credible and notable. Google rejects Equustek’s assertion that it operates “above the law,” noting that it is in compliance with the order while appealing enforcement. But in regard to this story, is worth considering how any independent business might hope to litigate in a similar dispute with the one company that owns nearly all search and online advertising worldwide.

Why does it matter?  Because at some point, we’re going have to reckon with the fact that every transaction that occurs online cannot be treated as speech.  To conclude otherwise is to sublimate the rights of individuals and small businesses to the whims of corporations that are simply too big to fight.  Although it is true that a Google search result is information and that Google is not breaking any laws by providing that information, this cannot be where the law and policy conversation ends.  When the information provided—perhaps it is even paid for—materially supports criminal conduct, are we truly so confounded by the murkiness of cyberspace that we can only conclude that no legal remedies apply because it’s all speech?

That’s certainly what Wikimedia would have us believe based on the brief it filed on September 15 in support of Google’s position in the Equustek case.  Long on hyperbole and short on substance, most of the brief’s eleven pages are dedicated to extolling the virtues of free speech as a human right, which I imagine the California court already understands.  But on the subject of comity (i.e. the need for the courts of one nation to respect the laws of other nations), Wikimedia employs what reads to me like a lot of misdirection with variations on the following theme:

“Global orders for the removal of content impose one country’s idea of freedom of expression on citizens of the rest of the world. Some countries have high bars for protecting free speech and the right to receive information. And some countries do not share the values expressed in the United States Constitution or international human rights law. If United States courts enforce removal orders from nations like Canada, Germany, and France, perhaps they will also remove content when ordered by Turkey, Russia, or China.”

Essentially, Wikimedia asserts (as does Google) that if global takedown orders like the one in Equustek become common practice, we run the risk that nations which do not respect rights like free speech and free press will dictate terms to those that do. If this seems hyperbolic, it is.  Because the argument assumes that U.S. jurisprudence is ill-equipped to distinguish between information that is exclusively speech and information that materially supports conduct that Americans agree is criminal.  This despite the fact that the U.S. maintains one of the most liberal free speech doctrines in the world, and our courts have been weighing exactly these matters longer than any other nation in existence.

It is fundamental to the principle of comity in this case that a U.S. court would likewise consider this type of injunction in Equustek a reasonable remedy because Datalink’s activities allegedly violate intellectual property laws that we likewise support in this country.  Conversely, by the same principles of comity, there is no reason whatsoever to jump to the conclusion that a U.S. court would capriciously offend our most sacred laws, namely the First Amendment, in order to enforce a ruling made by a nation whose sense of law is radically divergent from our own.

Wikimedia is guilty of overstating its own importance in the world and that of the internet in general as a conduit of information.  If the current political climate has not sobered many citizens to the reality that “information” can be a siren call to smash on the rocks of ignorance, I’m not sure what it will take.  Meanwhile, as real life is now unavoidably transacted in the the global market of cyberspace, the assumption that the internet must remain a universe beyond legal boundaries will continue to fail ordinary citizens and entrepreneurs in the interest of securing legal immunities for some of the world’s richest corporations.

The ineffably twisted logic still plaguing policy in cyberspace is represented by the very first sentence of the Introduction to the Wikimedia brief.  “This case involves an order issued by a Canadian court to compel Google to remove truthful information from its search results—not just in Canada, but around the globe,” it says.  Indeed.  “Truthful information” that just happens to link consumers to a company that is allegedly selling counterfeit goods. A fairly young child, still refusing to eat his kale, can make the distinction. So, it is reasonable to hope that U.S. courts can do the same.

“Monkey selfie” photographer reportedly broke. And for what?

Photo sources by mrbrainous & artush

This is a story about how people with self-righteous and futile agendas end up harming creators for absolutely no reason—and even end up harming society in the bargain. I’ve made light of the “monkey selfie” case in past articles because it’s hard not to. I mean, there’s a monkey in it.  But for U.K. wildlife photographer David Slater, it’s no laughing matter, especially after the organization PETA decided to sue him on the grounds that the copyright in the photograph belongs to the crested macaque depicted in the image.  The Guardian reports that Slater is now financially broke as a result of defending himself in this ridiculous case, and it’s impossible to fathom an upside to any aspect of this whole story. But let’s back up a little …

In 2011, Slater was working on the Indonesian Archipelago on the island of Sulawesi, studying a troupe of black crested macaques. These animals are endangered, hunted for meat, and it is only because of photographers like Slater than many of us even know a damn thing about black crested macaques.  According to his own statements, Slater spent three days learning to use the animals’ natural curiosities to his advantage and then purposely set up the conditions by which the macaque in the “selfie” (a female he refers to as Ella), ultimately snapped her own image while he braced the camera on a tripod.

There is nobody—other than the monkeys themselves—who can refute Slater’s description of the conditions by which the photo was made; and as this is the only evidence available, his account would seem to tilt in favor of his ownership of the so-called “monkey selfie.”  Based on American case law in photography, from the seminal case (Sarony v. Burrow Giles, 1884) to the present, I don’t believe it is farfetched to expect that a court would hold that Slater made enough creative choices in the production of this photograph to affirm his copyright.  But even if I’m wrong about that, it’s not for me or any party other than a court to really decide. As such, I personally would not use the image, even though I can get away with it.

But Wikimedia took it upon themselves to litigate that decision internally and then made the “monkey selfie” freely available to the world via Wikimedia Commons, refusing Slater’s request to have the photo taken down from the site. By the time the “monkey selfie” controversy hit social media, the dominant narrative seemed to be that Ella had randomly stolen Slater’s camera and inadvertently snapped an image of pure happenstance, which does not square with Slater’s own story.  If this were the case, however, then Slater’s claim of copyright in the image would be very weak.

But unless there is some evidence to contradict Slater’s own account of how the image was made, Wikimedia had no grounds, other than its own bully-sized weight, to assert that the photo lacked any copyright whatsoever. According to The Guardian, Techdirt followed in kind, also refusing to take down the photo, and Mike Masnick published a few articles asserting the absence of a copyright in the image as though it were a settled matter.  But it wasn’t a settled matter. Neither Masnick nor the Wikimedia Foundation had any right to declare that Slater’s claim of copyright in the image was invalid, which amounted to these parties—along with every other entity that used the image thanks to Wikimedia—essentially saying, “So, sue me.”

Many who rail against the enforcement of copyright in the digital age, suffer from the delusion that they are always defending the little guy against corporate or state power.  Sometimes, this is true, but not nearly so often as they like to think.  In fact, many self-appointed defenders of “digital rights” trample little guys all the time, and without in any way acknowledging that they’re doing so. The point I want to stress here is that Wikimedia, Masnick, and others were standing on their own notion of principle; and it would not occur to any of these parties to consider a) the standard of “originality” in copyright is subtle; b) there may be more nuance to the author’s claim than they think; or c) when in doubt, some basic respect for the presumptive author of a work might be accorded.

That last thought about respect seems entirely anathema to the opponents of copyright, which is part of what makes this story so egregious. Wikimedia and Masnick were both making a point that served no purpose other than to advance a maximalist (yeah, I said it) anti-copyright view. And society did not benefit from any of this nonsense.  Instead of Slater licensing the photo and using the revenue to pay his bills and then set off on another expedition, he’s now deprived of revenue, and society actually loses whatever photographs he is now not capturing.  “If everybody gave me a pound for every time they used [the photograph], I’d probably have £40m in my pocket. The proceeds from these photographs should have me comfortable now, and I’m not,” says Slater for The Guardian.

Enter PETA

It is at least likely—though we probably can never know—that it was Wikimedia’s initial refusal to consider Slater’s copyright that ultimately brought the “monkey selfie” to the attention of PETA. In a certain sense, this might have been like PETA’s too-good-to-pass-up “Dancing Baby” moment.  A monkey took a selfie, and the story went viral?  How could they not seize such a golden opportunity for anthropomorphic evangelism and fundraising? Of course they had to assert that the monkey owns the copyright.  All they had to do was sue the photographer.  Sure, he might go broke defending himself, but screw him because PETA is opposed to humans “exploiting” animals by taking pictures of them in the first place.  (Spoiler: I don’t have any love for PETA).

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think the humane treatment of animals is important.  But if this organization is going to spend federal-lawsuit money arguing that an animal can own a copyright, this only proves that they neither understand copyright law nor really give a damn about the welfare of the animals themselves. In fact, if they just spent the litigation money on the macaques’ behalf, they’d do more good; but that isn’t what PETA seems to care about. What they seem to care about is evangelizing a maximalist view of animal rights and bringing attention to themselves. David Slater is just collateral damage in their agenda, never mind that he’s the only party in this whole fiasco who has actually done anything positive for this endangered species.

Some of the reporting about this story, like this article in The New Yorker by Jay Caspian Kang, places too much emphasis on button-pushing with regard to copyright in photography.  Even the photograph that affirmed the copyrightability of photographic works in the U.S. in 1884 was not captured by the owner pushing the proverbial button. The standard for consideration begins with the question of who made the creative choices—and this can be quite minimal—to produce the resulting image.  So, without much deliberation, the courts ought to be able to glance at precedent and conclude that unless a monkey, or any other fauna, can minimally express the choices or steps she took to produce the image created, there are no grounds for her owning a copyright.  Unsurprisingly, intellectual property is not available to creatures that have not developed a capacity for communicating complex concepts through language.

Still, as the PETA lawsuit now burns time and money at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, what social interest can anyone say has been served by either the digital rights or the animal rights activists deciding that David Slater is not the owner of this photograph?  Slater is now looking for work other than photography to pay his legal fees; the macaques get nothing out of all this grandstanding; and zero progress is made in copyright law in any useful context.  I guess people can feel free to make Ella-the-Macaque memes on Facebook?  Right, they’ll do that anyway.

Yeah, this whole story is a joke. But it isn’t actually funny.