Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - April 4th, ’20

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002































April 4th, 2020




Announcing a National Emergency Library to Provide Digitized Books to Students and the Public
chrisfreeland

To address our unprecedented global and immediate need for access to reading and research materials, as of today, March 24, 2020, the Internet Archive will suspend waitlists for the 1.4 million (and growing) books in our lending library by creating a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners. This suspension will run through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later.

During the waitlist suspension, users will be able to borrow books from the National Emergency Library without joining a waitlist, ensuring that students will have access to assigned readings and library materials that the Internet Archive has digitized for the remainder of the US academic calendar, and that people who cannot physically access their local libraries because of closure or self-quarantine can continue to read and thrive during this time of crisis, keeping themselves and others safe.

This library brings together all the books from Phillips Academy Andover and Marygrove College, and much of Trent University’s collections, along with over a million other books donated from other libraries to readers worldwide that are locked out of their libraries.

This is a response to the scores of inquiries from educators about the capacity of our lending system and the scale needed to meet classroom demands because of the closures. Working with librarians in Boston area, led by Tom Blake of Boston Public Library, who gathered course reserves and reading lists from college and school libraries, we determined which of those books the Internet Archive had already digitized. Through that work we quickly realized that our lending library wasn’t going to scale to meet the needs of a global community of displaced learners. To make a real difference for the nation and the world, we would have to take a bigger step.

“The library system, because of our national emergency, is coming to aid those that are forced to learn at home, ” said Brewster Kahle, Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive. “This was our dream for the original Internet coming to life: the Library at everyone’s fingertips.”

Public support for this emergency measure has come from over 100 individuals, libraries and universities across the world, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “Ubiquitous access to open digital content has long been an important goal for MIT and MIT Libraries. Learning and research depend on it,” said Chris Bourg, Director of MIT Libraries. “In a global pandemic, robust digital lending options are key to a library’s ability to care for staff and the community, by allowing all of us to work remotely and maintain the recommended social distancing.”

We understand that we’re not going to be able to meet everyone’s needs; our collection, at 1.4 million modern books, is a fraction of the size of a large metropolitan library system or a great academic library. The books that we’ve digitized have been acquired with a focus on materials published during the 20th century, the vast majority of which do not have a commercially available ebook. This means that while readers and students are able to access latest best sellers and popular titles through services like OverDrive and Hoopla, they don’t have access to the books that only exist in paper, sitting inaccessible on their library shelves. That’s where our collection fits in—we offer digital access to books, many of which are otherwise unavailable to the public while our schools and libraries are closed. In addition to the National Emergency Library, the Internet Archive also offers free public access to 2.5 million fully downloadable public domain books, which do not require waitlists to view.

We recognize that authors and publishers are going to be impacted by this global pandemic as well. We encourage all readers who are in a position to buy books to do so, ideally while also supporting your local bookstore. If they don’t have the book you need, then Amazon or Better World Books may have copies in print or digital formats. We hope that authors will support our effort to ensure temporary access to their work in this time of crisis. We are empowering authors to explicitly opt in and donate books to the National Emergency Library if we don’t have a copy. We are also making it easy for authors to contact us to take a book out of the library. Learn more in our FAQ.

A final note on calling this a “National Emergency” Library. We lend to the world, including these books. We chose that language deliberately because we are pegging the suspension of the waitlists to the duration of the US national emergency. Users all over the world have equal access to the books now available, regardless of their location.
https://blog.archive.org/2020/03/24/...nd-the-public/





Internet Archive Offers 1.4 Million Copyrighted Books for Free Online

Massive online library project is venturing into uncharted legal waters.
Timothy B. Lee

One of the casualties of coronavirus-related social distancing measures has been public libraries, which are shut down in many communities around the world. This week, the Internet Archive, an online library best known for running the Internet's Wayback Machine, announced a new initiative to expand access to digital books during the pandemic.

For almost a decade, an Internet Archive program called the Open Library has offered people the ability to "check out" digital scans of physical books held in storage by the Internet Archive. Readers can view a scanned book in a browser or download it to an e-reader. Users can only check out a limited number of books at once and are required to "return" them after a limited period of time.

Until this week, the Open Library only allowed people to "check out" as many copies as the library owned. If you wanted to read a book but all copies were already checked out by other patrons, you had to join a waiting list for that book—just like you would at a physical library.

Of course, such restrictions are artificial when you're distributing digital files. Earlier this week, with libraries closing around the world, the Internet Archive announced a major change: it is temporarily getting rid of these waiting lists.

"The Internet Archive will suspend waitlists for the 1.4 million (and growing) books in our lending library by creating a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners," the Internet Archive wrote in a Tuesday post. "This suspension will run through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later."

The Tuesday announcement generated significant public interest, with almost 20,000 new users signing up on Tuesday and Wednesday. In recent days, the Open Library has been "lending" 15,000 to 20,000 books per day.

“The library system, because of our national emergency, is coming to aid those that are forced to learn at home,” said Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle. The Internet Archive says the program will ensure students are able to get access to books they need to continue their studies from home during the coronavirus lockdown.

It's an amazing resource—one that will provide a lot of value to people stuck at home due to the coronavirus. But as a copyright nerd, I also couldn't help wondering: is this legal?

“It seems like a stretch”

The copyright implications of book scanning have long been a contentious subject. In 2005, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers sued Google over its ambitious book-scanning program. In 2015, an appeals court ruled that the project was legal under copyright's fair use doctrine. A related 2014 ruling held that it was legal for libraries who participated in the program to get back copies of the digital scans for purposes such as digital preservation and increasing access for disabled patrons.

Both rulings relied on the fact that scans were being used for limited purposes. Google built a search index and only showed users brief "snippets" of book pages in its search results. Libraries only offered full-text books to readers with print disabilities. Neither case considered whether it would be legal to distribute scanned books to the general public over the Internet.

Yet the Internet Archive has been doing just that for almost a decade. A 2011 article in Publishers Weekly says that Kahle "told librarians at the recent ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Diego that after some initial hand-wringing, there has been 'nary a peep' from publishers" about the Internet Archive's digital book lending efforts.

James Grimmelmann, a legal scholar at Cornell University, told Ars that the legal status of this kind of lending is far from clear—even if a library limits its lending to the number of books it has in stock. He wasn't able to name any legal cases involving people "lending" digital copies of books the way the Internet Archive was doing.

One of the closest analogies might be the music industry's lawsuit against ReDigi, an online service that let users "re-sell" digital music tracks they had purchased online. Copyright's first sale doctrine has long allowed people to resell books, CDs, and other copyrighted works on physical media. ReDigi argued that the same principle should apply to digital files. But the courts didn't buy it. In 2018, an appeals court held that transmitting a music file across the Internet creates a new copy of the work rather than merely transferring an existing file to its new owner. That meant the first sale doctrine didn't apply.

So it seems unlikely that the first sale doctrine would apply to book lending. Could digital book lending be allowed under fair use? ReDigi tried to make a fair use argument, but the appeals court rejected it. The court "said we won't use fair use to re-create first sale," Grimmelmann told me in a Thursday phone interview.

In its FAQ for the National Emergency Lending program, the Internet Archive mentions the concept of controlled digital lending (CDL) and links to this site, which has a detailed white paper defending the legality of "lending" books online. The white paper acknowledges that the ReDigi precedent isn't encouraging, but it notes that the courts focused on the commercial nature of ReDigi's service. Perhaps the courts would look more favorably on a fair use argument from a non-profit library.

"We believe that these library uses, of all the varying digital uses, are among the most likely to be justified under a fair use rationale," the white paper says. "Several libraries have already engaged in limited CDL for years without issue. It can be inferred that this fact indicates a tacit acknowledgement of the strength of their legal position."

But Grimmelmann isn't so sure. "I never want to weigh in definitively on fair use questions, but I would say that it seems like a stretch to say that you can scan a book and have it circulate digitally," he said. He added that the fair use argument could be stronger for books that are out of print—especially "orphan works" whose copyright holder can't be found. However, he said, "it's a tough argument for current, in-print titles."

And the Open Library is well stocked with titles like that. The library includes many copyrighted books that are still in print and widely available. You can check out books from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, or novels by popular authors like John Grisham or Janet Evanovich.

No one seems interested in a legal fight

The legal basis for the Open Library's lending program may be even shakier now that the Internet Archive has removed limits on the number of books people can borrow. The benefits of this expanded lending during a pandemic are obvious. But it's not clear if that makes a difference under copyright law. "There is no specific pandemic exception" in copyright law, Grimmelmann told Ars.

Traditionally, fair use analysis is based on four factors, including the purpose of the use and the effect on the potential market. However, these factors are not exclusive. In theory, a judge could rule that the emergency circumstances of a pandemic created a new fair use justification for online book sharing. But Grimmelmann said he couldn't think of prior cases where courts have made that kind of leap.

So should we expect the Internet Archive to face a legal battle over its new lending program? The most obvious plaintiffs for such a lawsuit have been conspicuously silent this week. On Thursday, I sent emails to the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers—the organizations that sued Google 15 years ago—for comment on the Internet Archive's new library program. Neither has responded.

Two years ago, the Authors Guild blasted the Internet Archive's lending program as a "flagrant violation of copyright law." But as far as I can tell, they never went to court over the issue, and they don't seem eager to start a fight now. (Update: I didn't notice it before filing this story but the Authors Guild wrote on Friday that it was "appalled" by the National Emergency Library.)

The Internet Archive doesn't seem that interested in discussing the legal issues here, either. The Open Library has an extensive FAQ on borrowing books, but it doesn't have any questions about the legality of the program. When I emailed the Internet Archive asking about the legal theory behind the program, I got a response that directed me to another FAQ that doesn't directly address the copyright issues raised by the program.

It may be that neither side would benefit from a high-profile legal battle right now. For publishers and authors, the optics of suing a library that's expanding access to books during a pandemic would be terrible. And the Open Library's customer base is still fairly small, so the practical financial impact for publishers and authors is likely to be small, too.

At the same time, the Internet Archive has no reason to goad the industry into a lawsuit that it has a decent chance of losing. As long as copyright holders are willing to look the other way, the Internet Archive can continue providing digital information to as many people as possible—which is why Kahle started the Internet Archive in the first place.

"This was our dream for the original Internet coming to life," Kahle wrote on Tuesday. "The library at everyone’s fingertips."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...r-free-online/





Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library Harms Authors

The Authors Guild is appalled by the Internet Archive’s (IA) announcement that it is now making millions of in-copyright books freely available online without restriction on its Open Library site under the guise of a National Emergency Library. IA has no rights whatsoever to these books, much less to give them away indiscriminately without consent of the publisher or author. We are shocked that the Internet Archive would use the Covid-19 epidemic as an excuse to push copyright law further out to the edges, and in doing so, harm authors, many of whom are already struggling.

With mean writing incomes of only $20,300 a year prior to the crisis, authors, like others, are now struggling all the more—from cancelled book tours and loss of freelance work, income supplementing jobs, and speaking engagements. And now they are supposed to swallow this new pill, which robs them of their rights to introduce their books to digital formats as many hundreds of midlist authors do when their books go out of print, and which all but guarantees that author incomes and publisher revenues will decline even further.

IA is using a global crisis to advance a copyright ideology that violates current federal law and hurts most authors. It has misrepresented the nature and legality of the project through a deceptive publicity campaign. Despite giving off the impression that it is expanding access to older and public domain books, a large proportion of the books on Open Library are in fact recent in-copyright books that publishers and authors rely on for critical revenue. Acting as a piracy site—of which there already are too many—the Internet Archive tramples on authors’ rights by giving away their books to the world.

Last year, the Authors Guild and authors sent hundreds of takedown notices to IA and protested the inclusion of their books in the Open Library program. Now, during this pandemic that has severely disrupted authors’ lives and choked the publishing industry, IA once again is undermining authors’ ability to make a living and decide who gets access to their copywritten material.

Background

As the Authors Guild has written before, IA’s Open Library has already infringed the rights of hundreds of thousands of living authors as well as estates. IA self-designated itself as a library, though in actuality it is nothing but a website operator that sends millions of books to China for illegal scanning and then lends those books as ebooks out to anyone who visits their site—all in clear violation of copyright law. Unlike a real library, IA never bought or licensed the ebooks it distributes through its Open Library website. Until now, Open Library at least limited the “lending” to one user at a time for each hard copy book scanned (which in some cases includes dozens of copies of a particular title), comparing it to libraries lending out a hard copy book.

IA has made far-fetched claims that it is protected by fair use, but an appellate court case last year squarely decided the issue against them, as we advised them it would. There is simply no basis in the law for scanning and making copies of entire books available to the public. Now, IA has gone further and stripped away the one-user-at-a-time limitation so that any number of readers can access any of 1.4 million books at any time through a couple clicks on openlibrary.org.

As we have learned from prior conversations with IA when we pointed out the illegality of Open Library and the harm to creators caused by giving away books for free online, IA’s leadership is unsympathetic to the plight of authors and their need to earn money from their work. They were insensitive to our arguments as to why unlicensed, unpaid delivery of free books hurts authors and harms the public good in the long run. They were, and clearly still are, unable or unwilling to make the connection between authors’ ability to pay bills and the ability to keep writing. Although IA pays its staff, it apparently doesn’t believe that authors who write as a profession (as compared to academics who write books) need to be paid—as though authors live on air alone. When IA takes authors’ books without paying and gives the books away to anyone in the world who wants them, it is doing nothing less than stealing directly out of authors’ pockets.

As Authors Guild President Doug Preston states, “IA’s Open Library is giving away books that are not theirs to give away. It’s as though they looted a bookstore and started handing away books to passersby. They are hurting authors and bookstores at a time when they can least bear it. Anyone in America already has access to free ebooks through local libraries. There are over 100,000 libraries in the country where the public can access free ebooks.”

A Solution Without a Problem

AI is pretending to fix a nonexistent problem. It claims that the so-called “Emergency Library” is meant to provide students with “access to assigned readings and library materials that the Internet Archive has digitized for the remainder of the US academic calendar.” There are several misrepresentations in that statement.

There is no new, unfulfilled need for students to have free books due to the coronavirus. Students are indeed facing major challenges during this period, but access to books is not one of them. Publishers are already addressing any needs created by the closures and ensuring that students and their teachers have access to the books they need. The Association of American Publishers has posted a listing of many publishers’ programs to get books to students, teachers, and parents during the shutdown. And students are already accustomed to buying or renting their books online; indeed, many universities don’t even have physical bookstores anymore, and many textbook publishers deliver books to students through online subscription services. The shutdown has not interfered with these online markets.

Hitting Us When We’re Down

Publishers and authors want their books read. Readers do not need Open Library to come to the rescue by further harming the marketplace for books—at a time when the industry is already feeling incredible pain from the bookstore and library closures. Publishers, authors, bookstore owners, and readers have been coming together in magnificent ways these last few weeks to support this fragile industry, so much of which relies on razor-thin margins. Bookstores are closing, forced to lay off staff, small publishers are already hurting so badly that some fear going under if the shut own lasts too long. Everyone is working to support one another and especially the bookstores, so vital to our literary culture. But rather than supporting authors and book publishing, the Internet Archive is undermining it when the industry faces a crisis of epic proportions. Appalling indeed.
https://www.authorsguild.org/industr...gital-lending/





'Call of Duty' Wins First Amendment Victory Over Use of Humvees

A judge rules that Activision is entitled to summary judgment in a trademark lawsuit brought by the manufacturer of military vehicles.
Eriq Gardner

Call of Duty maker Activision has prevailed in a closely watched trademark dispute brought by AM General, the government contractor for Humvees. On Tuesday, a New York federal judge responded favorably to Activision's argument that it had a First Amendment right to depict contemporary warfare in its game by featuring Humvees.

"If realism is an artistic goal, then the presence in modern warfare games of vehicles employed by actual militaries undoubtedly furthers that goal," writes U.S. District Court Judge George B. Daniels in granting summary judgment in favor of Activision.

The video game publisher fought AM General's claims along with Major League Gaming Corp., a professional esports organization. The dispute was potentially worth tens of millions of dollars, and the discussion attracted intellectual property professors and the Electronic Software Association to weigh in with amicus briefs.

One of the reasons why the dispute became such a big deal was its potential to complicate a test established in Rogers v. Grimaldi, a 1989 decision that resulted from a lawsuit brought by the actress Ginger Rogers over the Fellini film Ginger and Fred. The test directs judges to examine whether use of a mark has artistic relevance, and if so, whether the work is explicitly misleading. But in this Call of Duty case, AM General argued that trademark laws hardly give way to the First Amendment when an infringing work is expressive, and when dealing with famous marks, judges should heed an additional eight-factor test for consumer confusion set forth in Polaroid v. Polarad. That's because, AM General told the judge, the "explicitly misleading" prong could be satisfied upon particularly compelling evidence of the likelihood of confusion.

Judge Daniels decides to travel down this road, and after coming to the conclusion that use of Humvees in Call of Duty has some artistic relevance, he ends up with a more surprising finding: The Polaroid factors actually favor Activision.

He acknowledges that there's strength in plaintiff's mark (i.e., consumers recognize Humvees) but doesn't see much similarity in how the two sides are using the mark. One is selling vehicles to the military while the other is creating realistic modern warfare video games. As for proximity of the products, while AM General may license out the rights to depict Humvees in games and toys, the judge isn't impressed because that's not its central purpose as a business. Then, there's the evidence of actual confusion. The judge acknowledges an expert's survey that shows some confusion (less than 20 percent), but says it tips only slightly in AM's favor.

One of the more notable Polaroid factors here is good faith, basically an analysis of why Activision decided to adopt Humvees into its game. AM general pointed to "documents, emails and witness testimony," the presence of Humvees decorated with Call of Duty logos at promotional events, and statements in user guides where consumers were allegedly told that Activision either owns or licenses the Humvee IP.

And yet it all fails as Daniels concludes that these "three clutches of circumstantial evidence, even if afforded the benefit of all reasonable inferences in Plaintiff's favor, do not demonstrate a desire to 'sow confusion between the two companies' products.'"

Here's the full opinion.

"To the extent that any of the Polaroid factors are satisfied — such that a modicum of confusion might be present — Plaintiff nonetheless has failed to present sufficient evidence to defeat summary judgment," writes the judge who then takes up whether Activision has offered a "persuasive explanation" of its use.

Here, that persuasive explanation is "realism," given Humvees' widespread use by modern militaries.

Daniels writes, "[A]ssuming arguendo that realism is the only artistic interest that Call of Duty games possess — an assumption potentially belied by the presence of narrative campaign modes in all of the challenged games — it is also true that realism can have artistic merit in itself."
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/th...umvees-1287882





Court: Violating a Site’s Terms of Service Isn’t Criminal Hacking

Courts have struggled to interpret the vague Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Timothy B. Lee

A federal court in Washington, DC, has ruled that violating a website's terms of service isn't a crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, America's primary anti-hacking law. The lawsuit was initiated by a group of academics and journalists with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The plaintiffs wanted to investigate possible racial discrimination in online job markets by creating accounts for fake employers and job seekers. Leading job sites have terms of service prohibiting users from supplying fake information, and the researchers worried that their research could expose them to criminal liability under the CFAA, which makes it a crime to "access a computer without authorization or exceed authorized access."

So in 2016 they sued the federal government, seeking a declaration that this part of the CFAA violated the First Amendment.

But rather than addressing that constitutional issue, Judge John Bates ruled on Friday that the plaintiffs' proposed research wouldn't violate the CFAA's criminal provisions at all. Someone violates the CFAA when they bypass an access restriction like a password. But someone who logs into a website with a valid password doesn't become a hacker simply by doing something prohibited by a website's terms of service, the judge concluded.

"Criminalizing terms-of-service violations risks turning each website into its own criminal jurisdiction and each webmaster into his own legislature," Bates wrote.

Bates noted that website terms of service are often long, complex, and change frequently. While some websites require a user to read through the terms and explicitly agree to them, others merely include a link to the terms somewhere on the page. As a result, most users aren't even aware of the contractual terms that supposedly govern the site. Under those circumstances, it's not reasonable to make violation of such terms a criminal offense, Bates concluded.

Courts disagree about how to interpret the CFAA

This isn't the first time a court has held that violating a website's terms of use is not a criminal hacking offense. In 2009, a California federal judge rejected a CFAA prosecution against Lori Drew, a woman who contributed to a MySpace hoax that led to the suicide of 13-year-old Megan Meier. Prosecutors had argued that Drew violated MySpace's terms of service.

In 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—which includes California—rejected another CFAA prosecution based on a terms-of-service violation. In that case, an employee had used a valid password to access confidential information, which the employee then used in ways that violated the employer's policies.

A 2015 ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals interpreted the CFAA in a similar way. It overturned the conviction of a cop who had used a police database to look up information about women he knew personally. While his creepy behavior violated police department policies, the court held, that didn't make it a violation of the anti-hacking law.

"The government's construction of the statute would expand its scope far beyond computer hacking to criminalize any unauthorized use of information obtained from a computer," the appeals court concluded.

But some other courts have interpreted the CFAA more broadly. For example, in a 2010 case, the Eleventh Circuit ruled that a Social Security Administration employee had violated the CFAA when he used an SSA database to look up information about people he knew personally. The ruling runs directly counter to the Second Circuit's ruling a few years later.

In a 2006 ruling the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that an employee, Jacob Citrin, had violated the anti-hacking law when, after quitting his job, he wiped an employer-owned laptop that contained information that was valuable to his employer—as well as data that would have revealed misconduct by Citrin. Citrin hadn't in any sense hacked into the laptop, but the court found that deleting the data nevertheless exceeded his authorized access.

Ultimately, these conflicting interpretations of the CFAA will need to be resolved by the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the question.

Last week's ruling only deals with criminal liability under the CFAA. There's a separate question about whether violating a website's terms of service could expose someone to a lawsuit from the site's owner. Here, too, the courts have yet to reach a clear answer.

A 2016 ruling by the Ninth Circuit sided with Facebook in a CFAA lawsuit against a startup that had logged in to Facebook credentials supplied by users in violation of Facebook's policies. On the other hand, the Ninth Circuit ruled last year that a small company, called hiQ Labs, didn't violate the CFAA when it scraped data from LinkedIn in violation of LinkedIn's terms of service.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...minal-hacking/





‘Zoombombing’ is a Federal Offense that could Result in Imprisonment, Prosecutors Warn

Hacking into a conference call seems like a fun prank — until you get arrested
Nick Statt

Federal prosecutors are now warning pranksters and hackers of the potential legal implications of “Zoombombing,” wherein someone successfully invades a public or sometimes even private meeting over the videoconferencing platform to broadcast shock videos, pornography, or other disruptive content.

The warning was posted as a press released to the Department of Justice’s website under the US Attorney’s office for the state’s Eastern district with support from the state attorney general and the FBI.

More and more of the world is increasingly self-quarantining due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and core pillars of society like public education and policy are moving from in-person meetings to remote conference calls on platforms like Zoom. In turn, that’s led to an uptick in conference call hacking and pranks. The most vulnerable forums are those of school classrooms, political meetings, and other sensitive gatherings including minors or confidential information. And as The New York Times reported on Friday, the weaponization of Zoom, not just for pranks but for harassment campaigns, has become a pressing concern at the highest levels of law enforcement as growing online groups gather on Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, and 4Chan to coordinate attacks.

Now, prosecutors say they’ll pursue charges for Zoombombing, including “disrupting a public meeting, computer intrusion, using a computer to commit a crime, hate crimes, fraud, or transmitting threatening communications.” Some of the charges include fines and possible imprisonment. The press release says that if you or anyone you know becomes a victim of teleconference hacking, they can report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.

“You think Zoom bombing is funny? Let’s see how funny it is after you get arrested,” stated Matthew Schneider, the US Attorney for the Eastern Michigan district, said in a statement. “If you interfere with a teleconference or public meeting in Michigan, you could have federal, state, or local law enforcement knocking at your door.”

The press release also contains some helpful tips for schools, political offices, companies, and individuals to avoid getting Zoombombed. (The Verge has also put together a handy guide for maneuvering the privacy and security settings on Zoom.) Oftentimes, it’s not a prankster hacking into a call so much as the organizer overlooking key privacy settings to help protect the call from unwanted third parties sneaking on.

“Do not make the meetings or classroom public. In Zoom, there are two options to make a meeting private: require a meeting password or use the waiting room feature and control the admittance of guest,” the guidance reads. “Do not share a link to a teleconference or classroom on an unrestricted publicly available social media post. Provide the link directly to specific people.”

The guidance also advises against allowing anyone but the host to screenshare and asks that users of Zoom and other apps install the latest updates; Zoom has put out quite a few this week to address the litany of complaints from the media and security experts over its lax privacy and security. Zoom also announced earlier this week that it would halt the development of new features for the next three months to beef up its user and platform defenses.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/3/21...pranks-doj-fbi





The EARN IT Act Violates the Constitution

The Graham-Blumenthal bill is anti-speech, anti-security, and anti-innovation.
Sophia Cope, Aaron Mackey, and Andrew Crocker

Since senators introduced the EARN IT Act (S. 3398) in early March, EFF has called attention to the many ways in which the bill would be a disaster for Internet users’ free speech and security.

We’ve explained how the EARN IT Act could be used to drastically undermine encryption. Although the bill doesn’t use the word “encryption” in its text, it gives government officials like Attorney General William Barr the power to compel online service providers to break encryption or be exposed to potentially crushing legal liability.

The bill also violates the Constitution’s protections for free speech and privacy. As Congress considers the EARN IT Act—which would require online platforms to comply with to-be-determined “best practices” in order to preserve certain protections from criminal and civil liability for user-generated content under Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230)—it’s important to highlight the bill’s First and Fourth Amendment problems.
First Amendment

As we explained in a letter to Congress, the EARN IT Act violates the First Amendment in several ways.

1. The bill’s broad categories of “best practices” for online service providers amount to an impermissible regulation of editorial activity protected by the First Amendment.

The bill’s stated purpose is “to prevent, reduce, and respond to the online sexual exploitation of children.” However, it doesn’t directly target child sexual abuse material (CSAM, also referred to as child pornography) or child sex trafficking ads. (CSAM is universally condemned, and there is a broad framework of existing laws that seek to eradicate it, as we explain in the Fourth Amendment section below).

Instead, the bill would allow the government to go much further and regulate how online service providers operate their platforms and manage user-generated content—the very definition of editorial activity in the Internet age. Just as Congress cannot pass a law demanding news media cover specific stories or present the news a certain way, it similarly cannot direct how and whether online platforms host user-generated content.

2. The EARN IT Act’s selective removal of Section 230 immunity creates an unconstitutional condition.

Congress created Section 230 and, therefore, has wide authority to modify or repeal the law without violating the First Amendment (though as a policy matter, we don’t support that). However, the Supreme Court has said that the government may not condition the granting of a governmental privilege on individuals or entities doing things that amount to a violation of their First Amendment rights.

Thus, Congress may not selectively grant Section 230 immunity only to online platforms that comply with “best practices” that interfere with their First Amendment right to make editorial choices regarding their hosting of user-generated content.

3. The EARN IT Act fails strict scrutiny.

The bill seeks to hold online service providers responsible for a particular type of content and the choices they make regarding user-generated content, and so it must satisfy the strictest form of judicial scrutiny.

Although the content the EARN IT Act seeks to regulate is abhorrent and the government’s interest in stopping the creation and distribution of that content is compelling, the First Amendment still requires that the law be narrowly tailored to address those weighty concerns. Yet, given the bill’s broad scope, it will inevitably force online platforms to censor the constitutionally protected speech of their users.
Fourth Amendment

The EARN IT Act violates the Fourth Amendment by turning online platforms into government actors that search users’ accounts without a warrant based on probable cause.

The bill states, “Nothing in this Act or the amendments made by this Act shall be construed to require a provider of an interactive computer service to search, screen, or scan for instances of online child sexual exploitation.” Nevertheless, given the bill’s stated goal to, among other things, “prevent” online child sexual exploitation, it’s likely that the “best practices” will effectively coerce online platforms into proactively scanning users’ accounts for content such as CSAM or child sex trafficking ads.

Contrast this with what happens today: if an online service provider obtains actual knowledge of an apparent or imminent violation of anti-child pornography laws, it’s required to make a report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) CyberTipline. NCMEC then forwards actionable reports to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.

Under this current statutory scheme, an influential decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, written by then-Judge Neil Gorsuch, held that NCMEC is not simply an agent of the government, it is a government entity established by act of Congress with unique powers and duties that are granted only to the government.

On the other hand, courts have largely rejected arguments that online service providers are agents of the government in this context. That’s because the government argues that companies voluntarily scan their own networks for private purposes, namely to ensure that their services stay safe for all users. Thus, courts typically rule that these scans are considered “private searches” that are not subject to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. Under this doctrine, NCMEC and law enforcement agencies also do not need a warrant to view users’ account content already searched by the companies.

However, the EARN IT Act’s “best practices” may effectively coerce online platforms into proactively scanning users’ accounts in order to keep the companies’ legal immunity under Section 230. Not only would this result in invasive scans that risk violating all users’ privacy and security, companies would arguably become government agents subject to the Fourth Amendment. In analogous cases, courts have found private parties to be government agents when the “government knew of and acquiesced in the intrusive conduct” and “the party performing the search intended to assist law enforcement efforts or to further his own ends.”

Thus, to the extent that online service providers scan users’ accounts to comply with the EARN IT Act, and do so without a probable cause warrant, defendants would have a much stronger argument that these scans violate the Fourth Amendment. Given Congress’ goal of protecting children from online sexual exploitation, it should not risk the suppression of evidence by effectively coercing companies to scan their networks.
Next Steps

Presently, the EARN IT Act has been introduced in the Senate and assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which held a hearing on March 11. The next step is for the committee to consider amendments during a markup proceeding (though given the current state of affairs it’s unclear when that will be). We urge you to contact your members of Congress and ask them to reject the bill.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/0...s-constitution





Comcast Says Voice and Video Calls have Skyrocketed 212 Percent During Widespread Self-Isolation

Traffic zooms up as more people work from home
Jacob Kastrenakes

Voice and video calls have more than tripled on Comcast’s network over the past month since people across the US started working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a blog post this afternoon, Comcast said traffic for that category is up 212 percent in total, with overall peak traffic on its network up by 32 percent. In some cities, like San Francisco and Seattle, Comcast says peak traffic is up closer to 60 percent.

The numbers quantify a trend that’s been plainly obvious to anyone working or going to school from home in recent weeks. Video chats — particularly over Zoom — have become a regular occurrence, as offices and universities look for new ways to hold meetings and classes. Yoga, parties, and dates are all happening over Zoom right now.

Comcast says it’s seen other major shifts in data usage over the past month to accommodate working from home. Uploads are now at their peak throughout the workday, whereas they used to spike in the evening. And as you’d expect, streaming video and gaming have seen increases, too. Video consumption is up 38 percent, and game downloads are up 50 percent on Comcast’s network.

AT&T is seeing an increase in usage of its network, too. Last week, it saw weekday traffic increases of around 30 percent month over month, with a spike in texting and Wi-Fi calling.

Both Comcast and AT&T said that, despite the increases in usage, their networks are doing just fine. AT&T writes that its network is “performing well.” For Comcast, the additional traffic is “well within the capabilities of the network,” Tony Werner, Comcast’s tech leader, said on a call with reporters this afternoon.

While streaming video companies have reduced their streaming quality across Europe to address bandwidth issues, Werner says Comcast hasn’t asked for similar treatment in the US and doesn’t need it. “We have not seen an issue up to this point,” he said. Streaming video data is heaviest on weekends, he said, so it’s less likely to interfere with people working from home.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/30/2...work-from-home





Broadband Engineers Threatened Due to 5G Coronavirus Conspiracies

EE suspects telephone mast engulfed by fire in Birmingham was an arson attack as celebrities claim Covid-19 caused by new network
Jim Waterson

Telecoms engineers are facing verbal and physical threats during the lockdown, as baseless conspiracy theories linking coronavirus to the roll-out of 5G technology spread by celebrities such as Amanda Holden prompt members of the public to abuse those maintaining vital mobile phone and broadband networks.

Facebook has removed one anti-5G group in which users were being encouraged to supply footage of them destroying mobile phone equipment, with some contributors seemingly under the pretence that it may stop the spread of coronavirus and some running leaderboards of where equipment had been targeted.

Video footage of a 70ft (20 metre) telephone mast on fire in Birmingham this week has also circulated widely alongside claims it was targeted by anti-5G protesters. Network operator EE told the Guardian that its engineers were still on site assessing the cause of the fire but it “looks likely at this time” that it was an arson attack.

The company said it would be working with the police to find the culprits. It said: “To deliberately take away mobile connectivity at a time when people need it more than ever to stay connected to each other, is a reckless, harmful and dangerous thing to do. We will try to restore full coverage as quickly as possible, but the damage caused by the fire is significant.”

The problem has become so bad that engineers working for BT Openreach, which provides home broadband services, have also taken to posting public pleas on anti-5G Facebook groups asking to be spared the on-street abuse as they are not involved in maintaining mobile networks.

Industry lobby group Mobile UK said the incidents were affecting efforts to maintain networks that are supporting home working and providing critical connectivity to the emergency services, vulnerable consumers and hospitals. Telecoms engineers are considered key workers under the government’s guidelines.

In one widely circulated video that has attracted millions of views on Twitter alone, individuals working for the broadband company Community Fibre are abused by a woman who claimed without any evidence that they were installing 5G as part of a plot to kill the population.

“You know when they turn this on, it’s going to kill everyone, and that’s why they’re building the hospitals,” she tells the baffled engineers on a London street. “Do you have children, do you have parents? When they turn that switch on, bye bye momma. Are they paying you well enough to kill people?”

A spokesperson for the company said it does not use 5G anywhere in its network and praised the calm response of its staff.

Media regulator Ofcom on Thursday warned that it was monitoring broadcasters who spread the discredited theory, although the coverage has spread more widely on social networks such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Next Door.

Almost every new generation of mobile phone telephony has attracted fresh theories about health risks, and similar 5G theories were already widespread before the pandemic but have been given a new lease of life by the crisis. Other variants on the baseless theory suggest the virus has instead been invented as cover for deaths caused by 5G rollout, while groups that previously claimed the mobile signal caused cancer or brain damage are now suggesting it is also responsible for a respiratory disease.

Social media posts from celebrities such as singer Anne Marie have helped spread the theory, while Holden, a judge on Britain’s Got Talent, shared a link to a popular Change.org petition promoting the rumour that the symptoms of coronavirus are in reality due to residing near a 5G mast. The petition was subsequently removed following inquiries from the Guardian.

International radiation experts have repeatedly made clear that the new high-speed telephone system does not pose a risk to humans, while pointing out that the coronavirus has spread widely in many countries without any 5G coverage, such as Iran.
https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...s-conspiracies





California Governor Says 'We Need More Googles' as Company Offers Free Wi-Fi and Chromebooks to Students
Jennifer Elias

• Google is partnering with California officials to offer 100,000 free Wi-Fi hotspots to rural households.
• The company also said it is donating 4,000 Chromebooks to students.
• The move comes as the state mandates students stay home from school.

Google will offer 100,000 free Wi-Fi hotspots and will donate 4,000 Chromebooks to students across the state of California, governor Gavin Newsom said during a news conference Wednesday.

The internet access points are supposed to help improve broadband internet in rural households across the state where internet access is either limited or very slow. Students will get access to the free Wi-Fi for a minimum of three months.There are still many parts of the state that do not have access to high-speed internet, however.

"This was a substantial enhancement that came just at the right time," Newsom said. "We need more Googles," he added.

"Proud to work with @GavinNewsom & partners to help bridge the digital divide in our home state," Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said on Twitter.

The latest move comes as Newsom announced that California schools will remain closed for the remainder of the school year, with many classes switching to online learning.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/01/coro...twitter%7Cmain





Google Data Centers’ Secret Cost: Billions of Gallons of Water

To meet surging demand for online information, internet giant taps public water supplies that are already straining from overuse.
Nikitha Sattiraju

In August 2019, the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association built a 16-foot pyramid of jugs in its main entrance in Phoenix. The goal was to show residents of this desert region how much water they each use a day—120 gallons—and to encourage conservation.

“We must continue to do our part every day,” executive director Warren Tenney wrote in a blog post. “Some of us are still high-end water users who could look for more ways to use water a bit more wisely.”

A few weeks earlier in nearby Mesa, Google proposed a plan for a giant data center among the cacti and tumbleweeds. The town is a founding member of the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association, but water conservation took a back seat in the deal it struck with the largest U.S. internet company. Google is guaranteed 1 million gallons a day to cool the data center, and up to 4 million gallons a day if it hits project milestones. If that was a pyramid of water jugs, it would tower thousands of feet into Arizona’s cloudless sky.

Alphabet Inc.’s Google is building more data centers across the U.S. to power online searches, web advertising and cloud services. The company has boasted for years that these huge computer-filled warehouses are energy efficient and environmentally friendly. But there’s a cost that the company tries to keep secret. These facilities use billions of gallons of water, sometimes in dry areas that are struggling to conserve this limited public resource.

“Data centers are expanding, they’re going everywhere. They need to be built in a way that ensures they are not taking critical resources away from water-scarce communities,” said Gary Cook, global climate campaigns director at Stand.earth, an environmental advocacy group.

Google considers its water use a proprietary trade secret and bars even public officials from disclosing the company’s consumption. But information has leaked out, sometimes through legal battles with local utilities and conservation groups. In 2019 alone, Google requested, or was granted, more than 2.3 billion gallons of water for data centers in three different states, according to public records posted online and legal filings.

Clashes over the company’s water use may increase as it chases Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in the booming cloud-computing market. Google has 21 data center locations currently. After pumping $13 billion into offices and data centers in 2019, it plans to spend another $10 billion across the U.S. this year.

“The race for data centers to keep up with it all is pretty frantic,” said Kevin Kent, chief executive officer of consulting firm Critical Facilities Efficiency Solutions. “They can’t always make the most environmentally best choices.”

Google often puts data centers close to large population hubs to help its web services respond quickly. Sometimes that means building in hot and dry regions. The processing units inside heat up easily and water is needed to cool them down.

“We strive to build sustainability into everything we do,” said Gary Demasi, senior director of energy and location operations at Google. “We’re proud that our data centers are some of the most efficient in the world, and we have worked to reduce their environmental impact even as demand for our products has dramatically risen.”

In Red Oak, Texas, a town about 20 miles south of Dallas, Google wants as much as 1.46 billion gallons of water a year for a new data center by 2021, according to a legal filing. Ellis County, which includes Red Oak and roughly 20 other towns, will need almost 15 billion gallons this year for everything from irrigation to residential use, data from the Texas Water Development Board show.

Many parts of Texas are already seeing high water demand, according to Venki Uddameri, director of the water resources center at Texas Tech University. “With climate change, we are expected to have more prolonged droughts,” he said. “These kinds of water-intensive operations add to the local stress.”

Water-scarce cities have to make trade-offs between conservation and economic development, and cash-rich Google is a big draw. “It’s a constant battle in Texas because of wanting both,” said Uddameri.

In August, Google filed a petition with the Public Utility Commission of Texas to strip a local utility in Red Oak, Rockett Special Utility District, of its federal right to be the sole water supplier to the property. Google said it filed the petition after Rockett confirmed it doesn’t have the capacity to meet the company’s demands. If approved, the petition would let Google get water from another provider.

Rockett contested this in a legal response and said Google provided little information on how the water will be used, both in its application to the utility and in “vague” conversations involving company representatives. Despite that, Google made “incessant” requests for the utility to assess if it can meet the company’s water needs, Rockett said in legal filings. Google paid Rockett to do a report on whether the utility could provide enough water for the project. That report has not been submitted and the internet company has been pressing the utility to complete it, according to Google.

Rockett brought a case against Texas’ public utility commissioners for refusing to dismiss Google’s petition despite being aware of the utility’s rights. A Google entity, Alamo Mission LLC, is named as a defendant in the case. Lawyers for Rockett declined to comment on the ongoing case. Google says it's not the only one looking for an alternative to Rockett. Another development in Red Oak is also seeking an alternate water supply, according to the company.

The planned data center in Red Oak would be Google’s second in Texas. It struck a deal with the city in July 2019. Red Oak officials told residents about Google’s plans ahead of time, according to Todd Fuller, the city manager. There wasn’t much concern about the impact the data center could have on local resources including water, according to Fuller. “Our water system is pretty robust,” he said, adding that the city doesn’t use its full water capacity.

Red Oak isn’t so laid back about water use on its website, though. On a page dedicated to water conservation, the city says it gets half its water supply from Dallas and encourages residents to reduce water use because Dallas’ six reservoirs are 18% depleted. Mandatory water restrictions will kick in if those sources become 35% depleted. Fuller did not respond to requests for comment on the matter.

Google said it doesn’t use all the water it requests, but the company must make sure enough is available for periods of high demand, or when the weather’s particularly hot. That’s necessary to keep internet services reliable, according to the company.

Google’s data center water use became a subject of controversy last year in Berkeley County, South Carolina. An environmental group opposed the company’s request for 1.5 million gallons of groundwater a day from what it said was a “historically threatened” source.

The company has also worked with Berkeley County Water & Sanitation to get 5 million gallons a day from the Charleston Water system. Google said its share of this supply is far less than 5 million gallons a day, with the rest available for the broader community.
relates to Google Data Centers’ Secret Cost: Billions of Gallons of Water

Google has been trying to secure the 1.5 million gallons—triple the daily amount it’s currently allowed in Berkeley County—since 2016. The Coastal Conservation League took issue with Google’s refusal to share information on how it will be using the extra water. Despite the opposition, the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control granted Google’s request, triggering a backlash from some residents.

The conservation league called out the DHEC for giving Google so much water while asking a local public utility, Mount Pleasant Waterworks, to reduce its withdrawal from the aquifer by 57% over the next four years. The utility exceeded its previous peak use demand by 25% in May 2019, one of the driest months last year in Berkeley County, according to Clay Duffie, general manager of Mount Pleasant Waterworks.

“It’s unfair that the DHEC is asking us to reduce our water withdrawal while someone like Google can come in and ask for three times more than their original permit and get it,” Duffie said.

Google eventually backed off its groundwater request and reached an agreement with the league to only use it as a last resort. The deal still lets the company withdraw groundwater if there’s a shortfall, when conducting maintenance, or when demand exceeds available potable or storm water supplies during peak user activity.

The Arizona town of Mesa, where Google plans a 750,000 square-foot data center, gets half its water from the drought-prone Colorado River. A contingency plan was signed into law last year requiring states dependent on the river to take voluntary conservation measures. Still, Mesa officials say they remain confident about future supply while continuing to remind residents to limit their water consumption. “We do not have any immediate concerns,” said Kathy Macdonald, a water resources planning adviser with the city. In 2019, Mesa used 28 billion gallons of water, according to Macdonald. City officials expect that to reach 60 billion gallons a year by 2040, a demand Mesa is capable of meeting, she said.

Big companies like Google wouldn’t locate to the city if it couldn’t meet their water demands, Macdonald said. Mesa passed an ordinance in 2019 to ensure sustainable water use by large operations and fine them if they exceed their allowance.

Google has toiled for years to reduce the carbon footprint of data centers. Today, the facilities churn out a lot more computer power for every watt of energy used. In its 2019 environmental report, the company argued that reducing its energy use also makes it more water-efficient. “Generating electricity requires water, so the less energy we use to power our data centers, the less water we use as well,” it said.

However, data center experts say there’s usually a trade-off between water and energy use. “If the water consumption goes down, energy consumption goes up and vice versa,” said Otto Van Geet, a principal engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Google relies on “evaporative cooling,” which evaporates water to cool the air around the processing units stacked inside data centers, according to its environmental report. The most common systems, known as computer room air conditioners, are energy intensive. Evaporative cooling uses less energy, but the process requires more water. Operators will often embrace the thirstier approach because it’s less expensive, said Cook from Stand.earth.

“Water’s cheap. In many places, the energy costs are much higher” he added.

In a data center application the company filed in Henderson, Nevada, in 2018, Google’s considerations included utility and real estate costs, tax incentives and availability of qualified workers.

Google has paid more attention to water use in recent years. It relies on recycled water or seawater where it can to avoid using drinking water or draining local supplies. Google also says it saves water by recirculating it through cooling systems multiple times. In Mesa, the company is working with authorities on a water credits program, but said it’s too early to share more details.

From 2007 to 2012, Google used regular drinking water to cool its data center in Douglas County, just outside Atlanta. After realizing the water “didn’t need to be clean enough to drink,” the company shifted to recycled water to help conserve the nearby Chattahoochee River. It’s difficult to use similar approaches for other data center locations because the required technology isn’t always available, according to the company.

“The Chattahoochee provides drinking water, public greenspace and recreational activities for millions of people,” the company said in a blog post at the time. “We’re glad to do our part in creating an environmentally sustainable economy along the shores of the Hooch.”

— With assistance by Mark Bergen

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...ons-of-gallons

















Until next week,

- js.



















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