(registration and full details: http://www.bcla.bc.ca/jumpstarting)

With debates over information policy issues all over the news, the question of who controls and who has access to information has never been more timely. Many people have heard of things like Bill C-61, TILMA, media concentration, information access, and net neutrality but may be unsure about the implications of these terms and how they relate to information, libraries, and the public sphere.

On the evening of October 23, Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, will give a keynote address on “Why Copyright? The Fight for Canada’s Digital Future” (synopsis below). His speech will set the tone for Friday morning’s panel discussions in which presenters will give conference attendees the background information they need in order to spend the afternoon discussing issues more deeply and coming up with creative ways of defending the public sphere from privatization and corporate control.

We are fortunate to have Dr. Sam Trosow give the Friday afternoon keynote talk to close off the conference. Dr. Trosow is Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario jointly appointed to the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS) and author of Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide.

Please join librarians and interested community members to discuss these pertinent issues and help come up with ideas for what you can do about them!

Thursday October 23 @ 7 PM, Alice MacKay Room
Keynote address: Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law
“Why Copyright? The Fight for Canada’s Digital Future”

In June 2008, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-61, new copyright legislation that closely followed the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The public response to the bill was both immediate and angry - tens of thousands of Canadians wrote to the Minister and their local Members of Parliament, leading to town hall meetings, negative press coverage, and the growing realization that copyright was fast becoming a mainstream political and policy issue. The “Canadian copy-fight”, which includes many new advocacy groups and the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group that has over 90,000 members, has attracted considerable attention from the mainstream media, with many wondering how copyright had emerged as a contentious policy issue. This talk will assess both the legislative proposals and the Canadian copyfight experience in an effort to answer the oft-asked question “why copyright?”

Friday October 24 @ 8:30 AM, VPL Lower Level

Friday’s informational speakers will be:

• Ellen Gould, Trade Analyst - speaking about TILMA and trade agreements
• Paul Holden, BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA) - speaking about net neutrality
• David Loukidelis, BC Privacy Commissioner - speaking about access to information
• Leslie Regan Shade, Concordia University - speaking about telecommunications policy
• David Skinner, York University - speaking about media concentration
• Paul Whitney, City Librarian, Vancouver Public Library - speaking about intellectual property

Closing keynote: Samuel Trosow, University of Western Ontario

To register for the full conference, or for more information about speakers and times, please visit http://www.bcla.bc.ca/jumpstarting. Student and low-income conference rates are available.

Michael Geist’s talk is free, but registration is required (http://www.bcla.bc.ca/geist for more information). Attendance at Geist’s talk is included in full-conference registration.

Great big thanks to the British Columbia Library Association, Vancouver Public Library, BC Electronic Library Network, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Island University, and Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives for their support.

PLEASE NOTE: Media Democracy Day will be taking place at the Vancouver Public Library on Saturday, the 25th of October. There will be workshops about media democracy and the legendary annual Independent Media Fair. For more information about that event, see http://www.mediademocracyday.org. We hope you can attend both the conference and the MDD events!

The French state and internet service providers have struck a deal to block sites carrying child pornography or content linked to terrorism or racial hatred, Interior Minister Michel [sic] Alliot-Marie announced on Tuesday. […]

Under the French plan, internet users, via a platform, will be able to signal inappropriate sites and the state, receiving the complaints in real time, will then decide whether the sites are to go on a so-called black list to be passed on to internet service providers to enforce site blocks.

Sites containing what appear to be blatant crimes will be referred to judicial authorities, the minister said.

I wrote about why this is a bad idea back in 2006, when Canada implemented a similar blacklist scheme for child porn. In brief:

• Filtering is ineffective.
• Blacklists can and will be abused to silence dissenting voices.
• ISPs are access providers, not content providers; they should be absolutely neutral with respect to what passes through their networks.

But enough about the issues. The real reason I’m writing about this is to make fun of French Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie.

“We can no longer tolerate the sexual exploitation of children in the form of cyber-pedopornography,” Alliot-Marie said.

Cyber-pedo-what?

[Alliot-Marie] insisted that the plan would not “create a Big Brother of the internet” and pledged her support for the “fundamental liberty that is internet access.”

I’m guessing that Alliot-Marie has not actually read 1984, because those two statements constitute a classic example of doublethink. Either that, or Allot-Marie is really so unbelievably stupid that she honestly believes a state-maintained blacklist that blocks access to online information is somehow not a Big Brother-style restriction on the “fundamental liberty that is internet access.”

Look, if you want to argue that child porn and hate speech are so odious that we need the state to keep us from viewing them, go ahead. But at least admit that you are using state power to place restrictions on free speech. To do otherwise demonstrates an utter lack of concern for the truth — and, well, philosophers have a technical term for that sort of thing.

I’ve recently heard through a grapevine that ACTA negotiants have reportedly signed non-disclosure agreements as a condition of their participation in this week’s secret closed-door meeting in Geneva.

This is an amazing and frightening step backwards in the history of global governance. It also epitomizes the ACTA negotiants’ dismissive attitude towards the importance of credible, transparent trade policy-making in the current global environment.

Canada, the United States, the European Commission, and six other countries are secretly negotiating a trade agreement that could sacrifice fair dealing and privacy rights, violate civil liberties and the due process of law, and have a chilling effect on free speech, all in the name of strengthening intellectual property laws.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is only getting attention now because a discussion paper with some details of the agreement was leaked to Wikileaks on Thursday. Since then, there have been two stories about ACTA on Slashdot and articles in a number of Canadian newspapers, including the Globe and Mail and various components of the Canwest empire.

Among other things, ACTA would:

• make infringement a criminal, rather than a civil matter (you can go to prison for trivial non-commercial infringement under ACTA);
• give border guards the authority to search your possessions for infringing content, and confiscate and destroy your laptop or iPod if they decide it has infringing content on it;
• require ISPs to spy on their customers’ online activities and block access to infringing content; and
• allow governments to share personal information about their citizens, evading domestic privacy laws.

These provisions are excessive. First of all, IP protections already quite strong, and existing agreements like TRIPS already cover the concerns ACTA is intended to address. Proponents of the new treaty have presented no evidence that it is necessary. The proposals stem from an unquestioned assumption that stronger IP rights are a good thing, despite vociferous objections from the library community, public interest groups, and ordinary people who feel that IP laws are already too harsh and unbalanced. Unsurprisingly, ACTA apparently makes no attempt to safeguard fair dealing or other end user rights — it’s all about defending the interests of intellectual property owners, with no recognition that copyright and similar laws are supposed to strike a balance between creators’ and users’ interests.

But it’s the new powers proposed to defend owners’ interests that are most alarming. Of particular concern is the plan to turn border guards and ISPs into copyright cops. Border guardsa and ISPs are not qualified to determine what qualifies as infringing content. Border guards in particular are paid to blindly enforce poorly designed rules (as anyone who’s had their toothpaste or hair gel confiscated at a security checkpoint can tell you). They are not IP experts, and no matter how well-trained they may be, they are not qualified to evaluate whether or not you have the right to have a copy of some song on your iPod.

The same is true of the ISPs, as we’ve seen over and over again in the years since the DMCA came into effect in the United States. ISPs have neither the time nor the expertise to judge infringement claims on their merits; as a result, they end up taking infringement claims at face value. In the US, where a notice-and-takedown system prevails, claims of copyright infringement are frequently abused to attack people exercising their free speech rights. The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse documents hundreds of these abuses. ACTA would only make the problem worse by expanding it to other countries — including Canada.

Underlying these concerns is the plain fact that the ACTA proposals would violate the due process of law. Border guards would be permitted to examine, seize, and destroy your property without judicial oversight or proof of guilt. ISPs could cut off your Internet access, not even because you’re a proven infringer, but because some random entity claims you’ve infringed their IP rights. That’s not how things are supposed to work in a democratic society.

But of course, there’s nothing democratic about ACTA. The agreement itself has been developed behind closed doors. It will likely be tabled for discussion at the upcoming G8 meeting this July, but so far no draft text has been released for public scrutiny. Civil society groups have been systematically excluded from the process of drafting the agreement (private industry lobby groups, by contrast, have apparently been involved from the beginning). There was a three-week consultation period in April, but if the government is only giving the public three weeks to respond to something, you can be sure they’re not particularly interested in what the public has to say. Organizations with limited resources, like BCLA, often can’t research the subject, draw up a response, and submit it within that period.

Even the structure of the agreement is anti-democratic. It’s being negotiated among powerful developed countries with strong intellectual property regimes. Developing countries, which have a very different IP agenda, have so far been excluded from the discussion. If ACTA is enacted, those countries will be forced to sign on, and are expressly forbidden from renegotiating the terms of the agreement when they do so.

ACTA is a bad piece of work. It’s unnecessary, unbalanced, and excessive; its development and proposed implementation are profoundly undemocratic; and it will seriously undermine fundamental rights and principles like privacy, free speech, and the due process of law — all in the service of narrow private interests. Librarians, and all Canadians, should oppose this alarming agreement.

UPDATE, May 30: Michael Geist reports that ACTA is “gaining steam, with a binding international agreement likely by the end of the year.”

A government database holding details of every phone call made, email sent and minute spent on the internet by the public could be created as part of a centralised fight against crime and terrorism….

Telecoms companies and internet service providers would be compelled to hand over their records to the Home Office under proposals that could find their way into the new data communications bill.

The information would be stored for at least 12 months and police, security services and other agencies across Europe would be able to access the database with court permission.

These new proposals are vastly more invasive than existing data retention laws. Right now, UK telcos are already required to retain information about calls and text messages, but they don’t store recordings of the calls themselves, nor do they store the text of the text messages. Most people, I think, expect this to happen anyway. The new proposals cover the content of all your online activity: which sites you visited and when, the text of every email you send and receive, logs of every IM message you send and every online chat you participate in — in short, everything you do online.

Then there’s the fact that the UK government would be in charge of storing all that data itself, in one big centralized database. Instead of having to go to the telcos to get it, the cops and spooks would just have to ask the Home Office for it. Those same cops and spooks made 439,000 requests for telecommunications data over a 15-month period in 2005-2006. How long do you think it would take for the Home Office to give in to the inevitable pressure to expedite the process a little by cutting out the judicial oversight? After all, Home Office staff have already been caught hacking into their own department’s records; it will be difficult for them to refuse when that nice policeman tells them he needs their help to stop the terrorists.

Finland’s initiative to block access to child porn sites is also blocking over 1,000 legitimate websites — including one belonging to a vocal critic of Finnish censorship.

The initiative is the result of a law passed in 2006 to filter foreign sites containing child porn. Finland’s national police force maintains a secret list of sites that contain, or link to, content that they consider to be child porn. When they find a site, they add its IP address to their list — thus blocking, not only the offending site, but also any other sites on the same web server. (For more details, check out this excellent overview of the censorship process.)

“But that’s Finland,” you’re thinking. “Who cares about Finland?”

Alas, much the same thing happens in Canada. Project Cleanfeed manages a list of sites that it classifies as child porn. The list is kept secret from the general public, but the major Canadian ISPs — Shaw, Telus, Rogers, Bell, MTS Allstream, SaskTel, and Videotron — all use it to filter your Internet access.

There are all sorts of problems with the project. The group that manages Project Cleanfeed has a good reputation, but as Cory Doctorow has pointed out, secret lists are ripe for abuse. (Remember, the Finnish police are using a very similar process to block a vocal critic of their censorship practices.) There is an appeal process, but it’s overseen by the same organization that blocked the site in the first place, and you can’t appeal if you don’t know that your site is on the secret list.

The ISPs’ participation also sets a bad precedent, since it means that they are acting as monitors of site content, rather than as neutral common carriers. And if they’re already blocking some types of content, what’s to stop them from blocking other types of content? In fact, as I understand it, by violating their own neutrality, they may be legally liable for their failure to block other types of illegal or objectionable content. For those of us who support net neutrality, this is obviously of some concern.

(I wrote about Project Cleanfeed in more detail back in 2006, when the project first got underway.)

The provincial government’s internal Internet filter is affecting ordinary Internet users in Tahsis, a small community on Vancouver Island.

An attempt to visit a pornography site, for example, would return a red screen with a British Columbia logo and a “** WARNING **” message: “This connection has been refused. The Internet site you are attempting to access has been designated by a web classification service as containing material that contravenes the BC Government’s Internet usage policy.”

The warning linked to a page that said, “Users must not access Internet sites that might bring the public service into disrepute or harm government’s reputation, such as those that carry offensive material.”

The local ISP is blaming the problem on “crossed wires” somewhere. Apparently, the ISP’s Internet connection is routed through the government’s network (presumably because Tahsis got Internet access through a provincial government rural broadband initiative). The filter is being incorrectly applied somewhere along the way.

According to the article, the same problem once affected the nearby town of Woss. It took six months to get the filter removed.

Back in June, a group of activists in the Lower Mainland distributed a parody issue of the Vancouver Sun, highlighting what they saw as the paper’s strong pro-Israel bias. As you can see, it was extremely well-executed. When I saw a copy at a local cafe, it took me a few moments (and a closer examination of the content) to realize that it was a parody. This press release from the Palestine Media Collective has more details.

Unfortunately, the giant media corporation that owns the Vancouver Sun is suing the parody’s creators.

A writ of summons filed by CanWest Mediaworks Publications alleges that long-time left-wing activist Mordecai Briemberg, other unidentified activists and Horizon Publications conspired to produce and distribute a phoney edition of The Vancouver Sun on June 7, 2007. […]

The suit said the defendants were “motivated by hostility to the principal shareholders of the plaintiff and by a desire to undermine, or hurt, the business of the plaintiff and its principal shareholders.”

The plaintiff’s writ, submitted by lawyer David Church, said Briemberg and six other unidentified people are involved in anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian media activities.

The writ alleges that the defendants “harbour antagonistic views towards the plaintiff, its principal shareholders and the reporting and editorial opinions expressed in the plaintiff’s publications, including in The Vancouver Sun.”

Just as a reminder, CanWest owns the Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Province, the Vancouver Courier, the Victoria Times-Colonist, the National Post, the Ottawa Citizen, and a few dozen other major and minor Canadian newspapers — not to mention Global (one of the major Canadian television networks) and several cable TV channels. Clearly they have trouble with the concept of dissenting opinions.

While I’m on the subject, you should also check out two other blogs: We Read Banned Books, about libraries and intellectual freedom, and Social Justice Librarian, about, well, libraries and social justice (including lots of information policy material). If you’re interested in the kinds of issues I write about here, then both will be well worth your time.