Shh...it's a secret

On Monday, ACTA negotiators took questions at a public meeting.  No text has been revealed.

He made the case that the ACTA process was as open as it could be, and pointed out that the US has just taken a second round of public comments from any group that wants to submit them. There’s no draft text because, said McCoy, no such text yet exists; ACTA is still very much in the drawing-up stage, and progress is expected at an October meeting in Tokyo. With proposals still hazy, McCoy could get into few specifics, and he is bound by the confidentiality of the negotiating process from talking about what other countries have proposed so far.

As for what ACTA is not, McCoy stressed that it will not rewrite US law, it will not be about searching laptops and iPods at the border, and it isn’t simply an attempt to placate Big Content at the expense of everyone else. McCoy explicitly said that USTR wants to engage with Google and ISPs and others before making any final decisions on language, and he said that USTR is committed to a good agreement, not just a fast agreement.

Is this sufficient?

• Ars Technica

Over a period of 12 hours, over 4,000 DMCA takedown notices have been sent to video posters on YouTube.

Over a period of twelve hours, between this Thursday night and Friday morning, American Rights Counsel LLC sent out over 4000 DMCA takedown notices to YouTube, all making copyright infringement claims against videos with content critical of the Church of Scientology. Clips included footage of Australian and German news reports about Scientology, A Message to Anonymous/Scientology , and footage from a Clearwater City Commission meeting. Many accounts were suspended by YouTube in response to multiple allegations of copyright infringement.

YouTube users responded with DMCA counter-notices. At this time, many of the suspended channels have been reinstated and many of the videos are back up. Whether or not American Rights Counsel, LLC represents the notoriously litigious Church of Scientology is unclear, but this would not be the first time that the Church of Scientology has used the DMCA to silence Scientology critics. The Church of Scientology DMCA complaints shut down the YouTube channel of critic Mark Bunker in June, 2008. Bunker’s account, XenuTV, was also among the channels shut down in this latest flurry of takedown notices.

Boo on using copyright to reach alterior motives. It’s not the point of copyright.

• EFF
• Wikipedia

The EFF has urged the Judge in Capitol V. Thomas to grant Thomas a new case.

But earlier this year, the judge in the case said he was concerned that he might have made a mistake when he followed the RIAA’s reasoning in his jury instructions and asked for more briefing on whether Thomas deserved a new trial. In an amicus brief filed today, EFF argues that the RIAA cannot take shortcuts when it takes music fans to court.

…

Joining EFF on the brief were Public Knowledge, the United States Internet Industry Association, and the Computer and Communications Industry Association.

Hopefully this will turn out well for Thomas.  $222,000 is a lot to pay.

• EFF

The US house has approved telecom immunity.  The senate will vote next week.

Washington, D.C. – Privacy rights and the rule of law took a serious blow today when the House of Representatives passed blanket retroactive immunity for phone companies that participated in the president’s warrantless surveillance program. The FISA Amendments Act, H.R. 6304, which House Leadership rushed to the floor today after its introduction yesterday, passed by a vote of 293 to 129. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill next week.

The bill was touted as a bipartisan “compromise” on the issues of electronic surveillance and immunity. But in fact it requires dismissal of lawsuits against companies like AT&T that participated in the program as long as the companies received a piece of paper from the government indicating that the surveillance had been authorized by the president and was determined to be lawful.

I’m not optimistic about the senate vote.

• EFF
• Wired

Michael Kwun, Google’s chief of litigation, has left Google for the EFF.

The EFF, based in San Francisco, said Monday it has snapped up Michael Kwun, the Mountain View-based search engine’s chief of litigation.

“I’ve really been a big fan of EFF,” Kwun said in a brief telephone interview.

Kwun, 39, graduated from Boalt School of Law at UC Berkeley in 1998. He was the lawyer responsible for managing Google’s ongoing defense against a copyright case brought by Viacom. Other intellectual property courtroom disputes concern YouTube, Google Book Search, Google AdWords and Google Image Search.

…

Google has recently lost several top executives, including Elliot Schrage, VP of global communications, Sheryl Sandberg, vice president for global online sales and Douglas Merrill, chief information officer.

This sounds like good news to me.

• Wired

The EFF successfully has kept Lockheed-Martin from posting take-down notices concerning B-24 images.

Last month we told you about Lockheed Martin’s effort to use trademark infringement claims to cause the removal of digital images of classic military aircraft from TurboSquid, a stock images site. The central mark at issue was the term “B-24,” which Lockheed managed to register as a trademark for use in connection with scale models of airplanes. We sent an open letter to Lockheed’s licensing agency, demanding that they withdraw their improper objections. We’re pleased to report that Lockheed has decided to withdraw its claim, and TurboSquid is putting the images back up forthwith.

It’s a shame we need the EFF for things like this, but we do.

• EFF