CyberLaw Blog

Archive for November, 2009

BBC News – Michelle Obama racist image sparks Google apology: “Michelle Obama racist image sparks Google apology”

Page last updated at 12:46 GMT, Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Google has apologised over a racially offensive picture of Michelle Obama which appears when users search for images of the US first lady. The image comes top of the Google Images results for “Michelle Obama”.

Google placed a notice over the picture titled “Offensive Search Results”, saying: “Sometimes our search results can be offensive. We agree.” But it refused to remove the image from its search. The White House has declined to comment.

Users who click on the advertisement above the image are directed to a statement from Google which explains that its results “can include disturbing content, even from innocuous queries”.

“We apologise if you’ve had an upsetting experience using Google,” the company says.

Google says a website’s ranking in its search results relies heavily on computer algorithms, using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query. But the search engine says it does not remove images simply because it receives complaints.

“Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority,” it says. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it.” However, the California-based web giant says it will take down certain images, if required by law to do so. A spokesman for Google, Scott Rubin, would not give details on how the image – which has sparked fury in the blogosphere – ended up as top result for the wife of President Barack Obama.

‘Slippery slope’

The picture first surfaced earlier this month, when it was removed because the site hosting it violated Google guidelines by spreading so-called malware – malicious software designed to infiltrate other computers.

But the image has now reappeared on another site, apparently untainted by malware, and therefore Google is bound by its own rules not to meddle with the search, say technology analysts.

David Vise, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author of The Google Story, told the BBC the search engine’s results get to the top based on popularity, not because of any ranking system.

He added: “If Google got a call from the White House telling them it’s against the law to have an offensive image of this kind which portrays the first lady in a racist manner as a monkey or an ape, then they would be obliged to take it down and I’m sure they would do so immediately.”

But he said it would be a “very slippery slope” if Google were to try to police the limits of free speech.

“Once you begin to block images, who is to say. It’s like the Supreme Court of the United States once said, ‘what is pornography?’ Well we can’t define it, but we know it when we see it.”

ANALYSIS
Martin Asser, BBC Search Engine specialist

Freedom of access to the internet means much offensive material resides there, but ordinary users are seldom exposed to it in daily online activity.

Occasionally, however, the world’s most popular search engine, Google, highlights such material, which is what has happened with a mock-up photo of Michelle Obama.

The cause is Google’s system of algorithmic analysis, which, without human intervention, ranks sites according to things like the number of links pointing there and the amount of activity at the site.

The shocking doctored image of Mrs Obama must have immediately created a flurry of interest – mainly negative – and that sent the image shooting up Google’s rankings.

RIPA III: A legislative turkey comes home to roost: “

The tragic consequences of anti-crypto law

Comment The first conviction of a man under the draconian powers of RIPA Part III tragically bears out a prediction I made at the time: that these powers would do little or nothing to tackle serious crime or terror, but would create a power the police could use to harass people and undermine their right to remain silent.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Net disconnection requires involvement of judge, says Commissioner: “Countries which pass laws allowing for the termination of internet connections used by suspected file-sharers without the oversight of a judge will be breaking EU law, the European Commissioner responsible for telecoms policy has said.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Police arrest people just to create DNA records, claims ex-officer: “Police are arresting people purely for the purpose of ensuring that their DNA is sampled and recorded on the police’s national database, a report by Government advisory body the Human Genetics Commission (HGC) has said.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Opera plugs hole in Great Firewall of China: “

Facebook withdrawal ‘upgrade’

Opera has sealed the hole its Mini browser tunneled through the Great Firewall of China.…

Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work

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(Via The Register – Comms.)

Spain warned on filesharing cut-offs: “

Slow down there José

Communications Commissioner Viviane Reding has warned Spain to look carefully at proposals to cut off alleged illegal filesharers.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Only in the UK……

UK jails schizophrenic for refusal to decrypt files: “

Terror squad arrest over model rocket

Exclusive The first person jailed under draconian UK police powers that Ministers said were vital to battle terrorism and serious crime has been identified by The Register as a schizophrenic science hobbyist with no previous criminal record.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

The Pirate Bay Tracker Shuts Down for Good: “

In the fall of 2003, a group of friends from Sweden decided to launch a BitTorrent tracker named ‘The Pirate Bay’. It soon became one of the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet, coordinating the downloads of more than 25 million peers at its height.

Despite this success, The Pirate Bay operators today decided to pull the plug and close down the tracker permanently. The evolution of the BitTorrent protocol has made trackers redundant they say, as BitTorrent downloads work well with trackerless solutions such as DHT and PEX.

‘Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well,’ the Pirate Bay crew write on their blog.

Aside from this shutdown, there is also another major development quietly under discussion.

TorrentFreak has learned that behind the scenes the Pirate Bay operators are talking to other BitTorrent site owners to encourage them to follow suit and completely ditch torrents in the future. BitTorrent has reached a point where trackers and torrents are no longer needed to download files successfully. Supported by all of the major BitTorrent clients, DHT and PEX can handle the transfers and Magnet links can largely replace traditional torrent files.

‘We’re talking to the other torrent admins on doing magnet links and DHT+PEX for all sites. Moving away from torrents and trackers totally – like pick a date and all agree ‘from this date, we’ll not support torrents anymore’,’ a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak.

Switching to trackerless and torrentless downloading on public BitTorrent sites does indeed seem to be an option. Previously, many people thought that BitTorrent would collapse if a dominant tracker like the Pirate Bay went down, but this doomsday scenario never unfolded. In fact, the recent downtime of the tracker did not slow down or stop many transfers, as DHT and PEX seamlessly took over.

Those BitTorrent users who don’t want to go trackerless just yet can of course still use OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent, or indeed one of the many other alternative trackers currently available.

Whether or not The Pirate Bay and others will move away from torrent files in the future, the closure of the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker is nevertheless a milestone in the history of the Internet. Starting today, the Pirate Bay has changed its tagline from ‘The world’s largest BitTorrent tracker’ to ‘The world’s most resilient (magnetic) BitTorrent site.’

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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(Via TorrentFreak.)

Facebook battles attack by child protection chief: “

Gamble unfriends social networks

Facebook has defended itself against criticism from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) that it has refused to join a reporting scheme.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Filesharing laws to hit websites and newsgroups too: “

Mandelson to ‘future-proof’ P2P restrictions

The government is planning to award itself powers to change copyright law almost at will, in expectation that new anti-peer-to-peer laws will drive infringement to other services such as Rapidshare and newsgroups.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)