CyberLaw Blog

Archive for the ‘Takedown’ Category

Worth reading this one….

Terrorism Act 2006 section 3 Internet Censorship powers have *never* been invoked: “

Back in October 2005 this Spy Blog article Terrorism Bill 2005 – part 2 of our comments asked:

Why is there any need for regulation in this area at all ? The existing Acceptable Use Policies of all UK website operators, for example, already means that there are no public ‘terrorist websites’ operating from servers within the United Kingdom.

If the intention is to somehow stop impressionable people from falling into the clutches of terrorist recruiters, then this is already as effective as it will ever be.

If people are already moving within extremist circles, then private websites, especially those hosted abroad, are beyond the competence and legal jurisdiction of the Home Office or the UK Police.

Any attempts to ‘disrupt’ these systems, such as those hosted in, say China, could easily be interpreted as ‘cyber war’, which would damage the UK economy far more than the slight, temporary effect that ‘disruption’ of such sites would have on the terrorists. It would also remove the opportunity for covert surveillance of such ‘honeypots’ for intelligence gathering purposes.

It now turns out that this inept Labour Government’s scaremongering and controversial Terrorism Act 2006 section 3 Application of ss. 1 and 2 to internet activity etc.. which relates to section 1 ‘Encouragement of terrorism’ and / or section 2. ‘Dissemination of terrorist publications’, have never actually been invoked.

HL Deb, 10 February 2010, c168W

Terrorism: Internet
House of Lords
Written answers and statements, 10 February 2010

Baroness Warsi (Shadow Minister (Community Cohesion and Social Action), Communities and Local Government; Conservative)

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many times the police have used powers under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2006 to seek the removal or modification of unlawful terrorist-related material from the internet in each of the last six months.

Lord West of Spithead (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Security and Counter-terrorism), Home Office; Labour)

The Home Office and ACPO (TAM) have set up a new unit, the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU), which was launched in a pilot capacity on 1 February 2010. The CTIRU is responsible for the co-ordination and execution of voluntary and Section 3 take-down notices. Further details on the CTIRU, including statistics regarding take-downs, will be available in due course.

To date, the preferred route for removing potentially unlawful terrorist content is through informal contact between the police and the internet service provider. This approach has proved effective. As a result, it has not been necessary to use the formal powers given under the Terrorism Act 2006 to seek the removal or modification of unlawful terrorist-related material from the internet.

Note the creation of Yet Another Unaccountable Bureaucratic Quango, the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU)

The legal powers under the Terrorism Act 2006, were, typically, and totally unnecessarily, made available to any Police Constable, no matter how ill trained, or ignorant of the internet or of free speech or religious freedom issues.

Why did the original legislation not restrict these legal power only to members of a properly trained unit, dedicated full time to the task, as, hopefully the CTIRU now is ?

Before the Terrorism Act 2006, UK based internet and telecommunications companies always cooperated voluntarily with the Police, and they appear to have done so since.

Before the Terrorism Act 2006, foreign based internet companies had no obligation to cooperate and neither do they now.

What was the point of it all ?

Why not simply repeal this Act, with no loss in effectiveness whatsoever against real terrorists, and thereby nullifying somewhat, the propaganda victory which these repressive powers handed to the terrorists ?

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(Via Spy Blog – SpyBlog.org.uk.)

Directgov battles terrorism with report-a-website page: “

Watch out YouTube

The Home Office has launched a page for people to report online extremism and terror-related content.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Jacqui’s jihad on web extremism flops: “

Counter terror ambitions countered by reality

More than a year after Jacqui Smith gave a major speech on counter terrorism, in which she said she wanted jihadi literature removed from the web, the internet industry has seen scant sign of action from the government.…

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(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

BBC News: Prophet cartoon row in Indonesia

By Lucy Williamson, BBC News, Jakarta, Wednesday, 19 November 2008

The Indonesian government says it has called on a blogging website to take down two cartoons which depict Muslim Prophet Muhammad in sexual situations.

The communications minister said the drawings were “very inappropriate”, and said if necessary he would ask internet service providers to block the site.

The cartoons, which appeared on the website last month, have provoked fierce debate among viewers.

Many Muslims believe it is forbidden to depict Muhammad in any form.

The two cartoons, which are several pages long, each tell a sexually explicit story involving the Prophet, interspersed with verses apparently lifted from the Koran.

Indonesia’s communications minister described the cartoons as “very unethical and very inappropriate”.

He said the ministry was asking the website to remove them. And if necessary, he said, it would ask internet service providers to block access to the website itself.

A ministry spokesman said the cartoons were offensive, not just to Muslims, but to all religions.

There were protests in Indonesia two years ago when cartoons depicting Muhammad appeared in a Danish newspaper.

Web providers to be named and shamed over offensive content

Politicians are ready to introduce league tables naming and shaming the speed with which internet service providers take down offensive material.

The culture minister, Barbara Follett, and her Tory shadow, Ed Vaizey, have backed the idea that web providers must be embarrassed into dealing with violent, sexually explicit web content.

Follett said she wants to see the pre-screening of material on sites such as YouTube, as occurs at present on MySpace. She admitted there was growing chaos out there on the internet, and order needed to be brought.

She has also admitted barriers aimed at preventing children from accessing over-age material on the internet are not just porous but leak like a sieve. ‘People can get straight through it, or straight by it.’

Follett warned: ‘We must teach children of the dangers of the internet. It is sad to make children more scared than interested, but fortunately the internet is so interesting that children tend to overcome their fear.’

Discussing the internet and video games at a Westminster debate and facing suggestions that the industry is lax about controlling content, Follett said: ‘We agree information about take-down times and levels of search need to be much clearer.’ Asked if she supported league tables of take-down times by internet service providers, she said ‘name and shame can sometimes can work very well indeed.’

Follett said: ‘Many people have said that the internet is like the wild west in the gold rush and that sooner or later it will be regulated. What we need is for it to be regulated sooner rather than later.

‘We need the service providers to come forward and show that they are the sort of responsible organisations whose services we can trust to our children.’

She added: ‘We must ensure that search engines have a clear link to child safety information and safe search settings on the front page of their website.’

She also said she saw ’some value in some form of age identity card for the internet. It is useful when it comes to alcohol and cigarettes and it is certainly useful when it comes to buying video games and other material on the internet.’

She added parents needed ‘control software to communicate automatically with websites’ age verification systems to prevent children from signing up to sites with false dates of birth.’

In theory social networking sites are not supposed to be accessed by anyone under 13, but this guideline is totally ignored. She said she was interested in some form of ‘age identification card’, or requiring banks to specify on credit card statements that the card had been used to access internet sites or games, so parents could be warned of their child’s activities.

She also said she backed pre-screening of user-generated internet content saying she was glad this was being carried out by MySpace. ‘It is that kind of responsible action that we are looking for, as it means people can trust a company.’ Ministers and politicians have been locked in battle with Google, the owners of YouTube, who claim that there is too much material going onto its site for it to be pre-screened.

The proposal for a ‘take-down’ league table is backed by Vaizey. He said: ‘The government is in a position to put out the information, and it is up to the internet service providers to react to it. If they are happy to be 55th in a league table of take-down times so be it.’

Overall, Follett’s remarks suggest she will be more interventionist than some other ministers, although she has stressed she favours the internet and largely thinks self-regulation is best option.

She also insisted there was not yet compellingly persuasive evidence of a link between watching violent video games and subsequent acts of violence.

Ministers have just set up a new child internet safety council following the review conducted for the Department of Children, Schools and Families by Dr Tanya Byron, the psychologist.

(Via Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk.)

Post from: TorrentFreak

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TorrentValley Raided and Shut Down: “

TorrentValley, one of the larger BitTorrent sites with millions of visitors each month, has been shut down by Bulgarian authorities. The site’s servers were seized by a Cyber Crime Unit, which acted based upon evidence provided by the Bulgarian music industry.

In 2007, TorrentFreak featured TorrentValley in a roundup article on lesser known BitTorrent sites. In the months after, the site continued its growth and became one of the larger BitTorrent directories.

The site’s success didn’t last, however, as Bulgarian authorities have just shut down the site after being tipped off by the Bulgarian Association of Musical Producers (BAMP), a music industry lobby group.

This case is again a prime example how the music industry and law enforcement agencies work together seamlessly. Investigators from the music industry handed over ‘evidence’ to the Bulgarian authorities, who went on to raid the site in question. Justice is meant to be blind, but it clearly isn’t in this case.

This case is not unique in this regard. IFPI, an anti-piracy lobby group for the music industry has helped gathering evidence against OiNK as well, claiming it was a criminal operation where hundreds and thousands of dollars were made. More recently IFPI was involved in the Italian Pirate Bay blockade, where they assisted the local authorities, and hosted the server where the takedown notice was hosted.

As we’ve pointed out before, in most police investigations, if a police officer is directly involved in a crime, he or she is usually unable to participate in the investigation, as being involved reduces that person’s objectivity. Justice is meant to be blind, not fueled by thoughts of personal redemption or vengeance. It is unfortunate that most authorities seem to be unaware of this principle.

This is not the first time Bulgarian authorities have gone after a BitTorrent site. In 2006, the administrator of Arenabg.com, the largest BitTorrent tracker in the country, was arrested by the police. The admin was later released due to ‘lack of grounds for his arrest’, but the government ordered an IP-block of the site nevertheless, which led to massive protests.

TorrentValley didn’t have the large fanbase Arenabg.com had, so protests are not to be expected this time. At this point it is also unclear if action has been taken against the administrator of the site.

Facebook Pulls Italian Neo-Nazi Pages After Outcry: “Facebook removed several pages from its site used by Italian neo-Nazis to incite violence after European politicians accused the Internet social networking site of allowing a platform to racists.

(Via NYT > Technology.)

John Ozimek: A victory for the terrorists | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Website censorship erodes the very freedoms that the home secretary purports to defend.

John Ozimek, guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 02 2008 20.00 GMT

The UK has a very real problem with websites that incite terrorism, and if we are not careful the government’s preferred cure could be as bad as the disease itself. Faced with the impossibility of policing material that originates from abroad, the home secretary is now planning to appoint herself the UK’s first official censor.

In 2006, the government passed a law banning the display of material that “directly or indirectly” encouraged terrorism.

The updated EFF report entitled Unintended Consequences: Ten Years Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which assesses the problematic application of the notice & takedown provisions of the US legislation is definitely worth reading. [Yaman Akdeniz]

EFF Marks 10th Anniversary of DMCA with Report on Law’s Unintended Consequences | Electronic Frontier Foundation

October 27th, 2008
EFF Marks 10th Anniversary of DMCA with Report on Law’s Unintended Consequences
Ten-Year Legacy of Harm to Fair Use, Free Speech

San Francisco – Ten years ago Tuesday, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was signed into law. In a report released to mark the anniversary, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) documents the ways in which this controversial law has harmed fair use, free speech, scientific research, and legitimate competition.

‘Unintended Consequences: Ten Years Under the DMCA’ focuses on the most notorious aspect of the law: its ban on ‘circumventing’ digital rights management (DRM) and ‘other technical protection measures.’ Instead of protecting against copyright infringement, this ban has routinely been used to stymie consumers, scientists, and small businesses. ‘Unintended Consequences’ collects reports of the law’s most egregious abuses over the last decade. In 2003, for example, Lexmark used the DMCA to block distribution of chips that allow the refilling of laser toner cartridges. In 2006, computer security researchers at Princeton delayed disclosure of a dangerous hidden program in some Sony CDs based on fears of DMCA liability. Meanwhile, the DMCA has not prevented digital piracy. DRM systems are consistently and routinely broken almost immediately upon their introduction.

‘Over the last ten years, the DMCA has done far more harm to fair use, free speech, scientific research, and competition than it has to digital piracy. Measured from the perspective of the public, it’s been a decade of costs, with no benefits,’ said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann. ‘The music industry has given up on DRM, and Hollywood now relies on DRM principally to stop innovation that it doesn’t like. It’s time for Congress to consider giving up on this failed experiment to back up DRM systems with misguided laws.’

For ‘Unintended Consequences: Ten Years Under the DMCA’:
http://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-consequences-ten-years-under-dmca

For more on the DMCA:
http://www.eff.org/issues/dmca

‘Notice-and-Take-Down’: “Dutch ‘Notice-and-Take-Down’ Code of Conduct issued
Minister for Foreign Trade Heemskerk kicked off the ‘Notice-and-Take-Down’ Code of Conduct in The Hague. The Code sets out how internet companies are to handle reports about illegal websites. Under the terms of the Code of Conduct, illegal websites hosted from the Netherlands will eventually be removed.

‘We have already made substantial progress fighting spam, spyware and malware. These agreements now help us tackle other illegal activities on the internet, including handling stolen goods, discrimination or phishing’, says Mr Heemskerk.

The code of Conduct is based on good practices from businesses, governments and other parties involved in fighting cybercrime. The Code has been drawn up under the flag of the National Infrastructure Cybercrime (Ministry of Economic Affairs) by market parties including KPN, XS4ALL, ISPConnect, Dutch Hosting Provider Association, NLKabel, Ziggo, UPC, CAIW, Zeelandnet and SIDN. Ministries, the police and investigation services and organisations including Marktplaats/eBay and the BREIN foundations collaborated in setting up the code. ‘Affiliated businesses – 85% of all access providers and several hosting providers – hereby send a clear signal that the internet is not to be used for illegal practices. I call upon others to follow their lead’, says Heemskerk.

Those responsible for placing illegal content on the internet are often difficult to trace. As reports about illegal Dutch sites are rarely acted upon, these sites often remain online. The Code sets out the agreements between participants and their specific roles in dealing with reports they receive. In principle, internet users can report any illegal content they come across to those responsible for placing the content on the net. If this is not possible or if they don’t know who to approach, users can report their find to the next party down the chain. This may be the manager of a discussion forum, the company that hosts the relevant website, the service provider or, as a last resort, the police. These other parties in the chain will make every effort to get the information off line. The new Code will become effective today, Thursday October 9th.

According to Heemskerk, the Code is a great example of public-private cooperation. ‘We will follow up later this year with more measures to fight cybercrime. For instance, once passed by the Senate, a ban on sending spam to companies will be introduced from early next year’, he says.

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(Via .)