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You know those FBI warning messages that appear at the beginning of DVDs and Blu-ray discs? They're getting an upgrade—and they're multiplying.

The US government yesterday rolled out not one but two copyright notices, one to "warn" and one to "educate." Six major movie studios will begin using the new notices this week.

The main change is that Immigrations & Customs Enforcement (ICE) has, in the last several years, made itself a key player in the copyright wars. The FBI has shown extremely limited interest in going after individual websites, but ICE has done so with gusto; it has so far seized more than 750 domain names after rightsholder complaints. This new prominence is reflected in the broader logos used.

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The Dutch Parliament

Flickr user Andrew Griffith

A year ago, the former Dutch telecoms monopolist KPN unveiled a plan to make mobile users pay extra for data used by certain third-party apps, such as WhatsApp and Skype, that replaced KPN services like text messaging and voice calls. In response, the Dutch parliament quickly added net neutrality provisions to its telecommunications law. Tuesday, the Dutch senate at last approved the law, making the Netherlands the second country in the world (after Chile) with net neutrality written into statute.

The new law also requires websites to ask users for permission before cookies can be stored in their browsers, but these provisions won't go into effect until 2013, giving the European Union some time to address the user tracking issue.

How we got here

Let's return to 2011, when KPN issued a press release announcing its annual report. "In Q4 2011, the wireless market remained challenging, and a further decrease of voice and SMS service revenues was noticeable," it said then. "Data usage continued to rise due to the increased usage of communication apps. This changing customer behavior, which was first witnessed in Q1 2011 at the Hi brand, is now also visible at the KPN brand." (The Hi brand is targeted at a young/urban demographic.)

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Last month Counting Crows released their latest studio album titled Underwater Sunshine (Or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation).

Fans have been waiting since 2008 for the release and it’s selling well, but that won’t prevent the band from giving some tracks away for free.

Counting Crows decided to team up with BitTorrent Inc. and today they release a promotional bundle with the songs Untitled (Love Song), Like Teenage Gravity, Hospital, and Meet on the Ledge.

The download, which also includes high-resolution album artwork and liner notes from lead singer Adam Duritz, is available to BitTorrent’s 150 million users and will be bundled with all new downloads of the uTorrent client.

While this isn’t the first time artists have used BitTorrent’s promotion program to share their works for free, Counting Crows are perhaps the biggest name thus far. To find out why the band decided to embrace BitTorrent, TorrentFreak caught up with Adam Duritz.

“I’ve been a big proponent of giving songs away for a long time,” says Duritz, explaining why the band decided to share their music on BitTorrent.

While the singer doesn’t endorse people simply taking stuff, he realizes that BitTorrent can do a lot of good for musicians.

“I can dwell on the negatives, but I don’t want to miss out on the fact that there’s 150 million people who I can give songs to. You either treat it as just a money drain, like the record companies do. Or you can treat it as it actually is, which is a conduit, meaning it runs both ways.”

“You can either cry about it or make use of it. File-sharing is no different from the rest of the Internet, it is a tool that connects the entire world. It is the cure for Babel,” Duritz adds.

According to the singer the Internet is a “huge benefit” to music. Counting Crows realized this early on and started posting about their music on a message forum in 1995.

In the years that followed the music industry changed dramatically. But while the record labels have been complaining bitterly, according to the band’s frontman musicians are actually better off.

“Record business was never all that great for bands. It was always a 99 percent failure rate of bands. Even if you did do well record labels took 80 percent of your revenue and locked up your rights. And they are completely incompetent,” Duritz told TorrentFreak.

BitTorrent, the Internet and technological advances have democratized music and made it more accessible than ever before. Promotion is not centralized through the labels, but now works through bloggers, social networks and music services.

“On the Internet dependent bands can survive. Perhaps they don’t become megastars, but at least they can survive and thrive. And there’s a lot of great music out there right now.”

People make their own radio stations now according to Duritz, and BitTorrent plays a vital role there.

“If you got 150 million people on BitTorrent, then that’s the new radio station. That’s a better radio station in fact, because people have the choice to play it as much as they want and stop when they get sick of it.”

“I can’t believe everybody’s not doing it,” Duritz says, adding that it’s much better than bribing radio stations or record stores.

“It’s a no brainer to me and now that we’re an independent band we don’t have to listen to a bunch of idiots who tell us what we should or shouldn’t do. We can have smart people or we can trust ourselves.”

The Counting Crows frontman is no stranger to BitTorrent either. He knows sites like crows-town.com that are devoted to sharing his concerts, and he supports them.

“I gave birth to these websites basically because we’ve been encouraging people to tape concerts from the very beginning. We’re a good live band, so they’re going to want to listen to it. It would be great if we could sell concert recordings, but we don’t have to monetize everything,” Duritz told us.

“I have a whole wall of bootlegs in my house, not of us, but of other bands. So it would be a little hypocritical if I started getting angry at everybody else now. I think it’s a great thing and don’t know why bands have ever fought people recording shows because it’s a great advertisement for your product.”

So in part these torrent sites act as a promotional tool. And that’s exactly the reason why Counting Crows is partnering with BitTorrent.

“Giving songs away will draw people to the record, it will also draw people to the tour that’s coming up. Those are pretty big things. The fact that you can give something to that many people is not a small thing,” Duritz says.

“As an artist it’s what you’ve been wanting to do all along, which is to get your music to people.”

That said, Duritz thinks people will continue to buy music. However, they want sincere artists who charge a reasonable price, and not a band that’s backed by a record label people don’t trust.

“I believe in the future of the music business, just not the record labels,” he concludes.

For those who are interested, the Counting Crows bundle can be downloaded here.

Source: BitTorrent is the New Radio, Says Counting Crows Frontman

Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole, a security supervisor at Newark airport, lived a double life for 20 years using the identity of the victim in an unsolved murder.

Since 1992, the undocumented Nigerian immigrant worked at EWR as Jerry Thomas, a man who was killed that same year in New York City. Oyewole continued to live as Thomas undetected for two decades, while overseeing security matters at one of America's busiest airports.

According to the Associated Press report, "the private security guards he supervised are responsible for manning TSA security checkpoints after passenger gates close for the evening and before they reopen in the morning. The guards also inspect delivery vehicles for possible unauthorized cargo."

Oops.

(Photo: Newark Liberty International Airport; courtesy Port Authority of NY and NJ.)

Why do otherwise rational people think it's a good idea to profile people at airports? Recently, neuroscientist and best-selling author Sam Harris related a story of an elderly couple being given the twice-over by the TSA, pointed out how these two were obviously not a threat, and recommended that the TSA focus on the actual threat: "Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim."

This is a bad idea. It doesn’t make us any safer -- and it actually puts us all at risk.

The right way to look at security is in terms of cost-benefit trade-offs. If adding profiling to airport checkpoints allowed us to detect more threats at a lower cost, than we should implement it. If it didn't, we'd be foolish to do so. Sometimes profiling works. Consider a sheep in a meadow, happily munching on grass. When he spies a wolf, he's going to judge that individual wolf based on a bunch of assumptions related to the past behavior of its species. In short, that sheep is going to profile...and then run away. This makes perfect sense, and is why evolution produced sheep -- and other animals -- that react this way. But this sort of profiling doesn't work with humans at airports, for several reasons.

First, in the sheep's case the profile is accurate, in that all wolves are out to eat sheep. Maybe a particular wolf isn't hungry at the moment, but enough wolves are hungry enough of the time to justify the occasional false alarm. However, it isn't true that almost all Muslims are out to blow up airplanes. In fact, almost none of them are. Post 9/11, we’ve had 2 Muslim terrorists on U.S airplanes: the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber. If you assume 0.8% (that’s one estimate of the percentage of Muslim Americans) of the 630 million annual airplane fliers are Muslim and triple it to account for others who look Semitic, then the chances any profiled flier will be a Muslim terrorist is 1 in 80 million. Add the 19 9/11 terrorists -- arguably a singular event -- that number drops to 1 in 8 million. Either way, because the number of actual terrorists is so low, almost everyone selected by the profile will be innocent. This is called the "base rate fallacy," and dooms any type of broad terrorist profiling, including the TSA’s behavioral profiling.

Second, sheep can safely ignore animals that don't look like the few predators they know. On the other hand, to assume that only Arab-appearing people are terrorists is dangerously naive. Muslims are black, white, Asian, and everything else -- most Muslims are not Arab. Recent terrorists have been European, Asian, African, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern; male and female; young and old. Underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was Nigerian. Shoe bomber Richard Reid was British with a Jamaican father. One of the London subway bombers, Germaine Lindsay, was Afro-Caribbean. Dirty bomb suspect Jose Padilla was Hispanic-American. The 2002 Bali terrorists were Indonesian. Both Timothy McVeigh and the Unabomber were white Americans. The Chechen terrorists who blew up two Russian planes in 2004 were female. Focusing on a profile increases the risk that TSA agents will miss those who don't match it.

Third, wolves can't deliberately try to evade the profile. A wolf in sheep’s clothing is just a story, but humans are smart and adaptable enough to put the concept into practice. Once the TSA establishes a profile, terrorists will take steps to avoid it. The Chechens deliberately chose female suicide bombers because Russian security was less thorough with women. Al Qaeda has tried to recruit non-Muslims. And terrorists have given bombs to innocent -- and innocent-looking -- travelers. Randomized secondary screening is more effective, especially since the goal isn't to catch every plot but to create enough uncertainty that terrorists don’t even try.

And fourth, sheep don't care if they offend innocent wolves; the two species are never going to be friends. At airports, though, there is an enormous social and political cost to the millions of false alarms. Beyond the societal harms of deliberately harassing a minority group, singling out Muslims alienates the very people who are in the best position to discover and alert authorities about Muslim plots before the terrorists even get to the airport. This alone is reason enough not to profile.

I too am incensed -- but not surprised -- when the TSA singles out four-year old girls, children with cerebral palsy, pretty women, the elderly, and wheelchair users for humiliation, abuse, and sometimes theft. Any bureaucracy that processes 630 million people per year will generate stories like this. When people propose profiling, they are really asking for a security system that can apply judgment. Unfortunately, that's really hard. Rules are easier to explain and train. Zero tolerance is easier to justify and defend. Judgment requires better-educated, more expert, and much-higher-paid screeners. And the personal career risks to a TSA agent of being wrong when exercising judgment far outweigh any benefits from being sensible.

The proper reaction to screening horror stories isn't to subject only "those people" to it; it's to subject no one to it. (Can anyone even explain what hypothetical terrorist plot could successfully evade normal security, but would be discovered during secondary screening?) Invasive TSA screening is nothing more than security theater. It doesn't make us safer, and it's not worth the cost. Even more strongly, security isn't our society's only value. Do we really want the full power of government to act out our stereotypes and prejudices? Have we Americans ever done something like this and not been ashamed later? This is what we have a Constitution for: to help us live up to our values and not down to our fears.

This essay previously appeared on Forbes.com and Sam Harris's blog.

The German Pirate Party has taken seats in the fourth consecutive regional election, this time in North Rhine-Westphalia, where it received 7.5% of the vote, which will likely translate to 18 seats. These state-level elections are being viewed in part as a referendum on austerity and other Merkel doctrines, and there's a growing tide of disgust with business-as-usual across Europe. The Pirates are doing a good job of presenting themselves as a real alternative, albeit one with a specialized agenda. The trick will be for the Pirates to articulate the equation that all copyright policy ends up being Internet policy, and all Internet policy ends up being policy for everything, since everything we do involves the Internet. So far, many people are taking that idea to heart. Party founder Rick Falkvinge provides some analysis of the German PP phenomenon:

The first reason is that the German Piratenpartei was long-term from the get-go. Where most pirate parties are started like any internet project – “we’re going to change the world come next weekend” – the Germans knew they would be around for a long time, and invested early in the organizational foundation for that.

The second reason is timing and ripples on the water. When the Swedish Piratpartiet had its breakthrough in the European Parliament, and was in media all over the world, the German Piratenpartei was able to exploit that momentum when a local minister named Ursula wanted to create a net censorship to fight CP. T-shirts with the name “Zensursula” were common, zensur being German for censorship. The goverment did not win the narrative on that one, and the idea of censorship was abandoned while the Piratenpartei raked in new members. I’d say that this was the breakthrough in activist critical mass.

The third reason is Germany’s federal party support. Having won 1% in the European elections and 2% in the federal elections in 2009 entitled the Piratenpartei to considerable governmental funding, which is paid out to all parties that beat the half-percent mark in elections. This has allowed the Piratenpartei to buy themselves the appearance of an established party out in the streets – their posters and banners are everywhere on paid billboards, as well as on streetlights and more activist-associated locations. But all of it looks professional, yet with a new message. It looks electable, which is key.

German Pirate Party Scores Fourth Consecutive Election Win - Falkvinge on Infopolicy

US Trade Ambassador Ron Kirk was in Dallas to kick off a corporate power-event to drum up support for the foundering, secretive Transpacific Partnership, a secret treaty that builds on the work of ACTA to establishing punishing copyright laws that include mandatory surveillance and censorship. The Yes Men crashed the gala, taking the podium to present Kirk with a "Corporate Power Tool Award," which he tried to accept, but his minders from the Secret Service wouldn't let him.

The first action began when a smartly-dressed man approached the podium immediately after the gala's keynote speech by Ron Kirk, U.S. Trade Representative and former mayor of Dallas. The man (local puppeteer David Goodwin) introduced himself as "Git Haversall," president of the "Texas Corporate Power Partnership," and announced he was giving Kirk and other U.S. trade negotiators the "2012 Corporate Power Tool Award," which "Haversall's" partner held aloft.

The crowd of negotiators and corporate representatives applauded, and "Haversall" continued: "I'd like to personally thank the negotiators for their relentless efforts. The TPP agreement is shaping up to be a fantastic way for us to maximize profits, regardless of what the public of this nation—or any other nation—thinks is right."

At that point, the host of the reception took the microphone back and announced that the evening's formal programming had concluded. But Mr. Haversall confidently re-took the microphone and warmly invited Kirk to accept the award.

Kirk moved towards the stage, but federal agents blocked his path to protect him from further embarrassment. At that point, a dozen well-dressed "delegates" (local activists, some from Occupy Dallas) broke into ecstatic dance and chanted "TPP! TPP! TPP!" for several minutes until Dallas police arrived.

Party ends badly for U.S. trade reps, federal agents (via David Akin)

An ode to the father of the electric age.

In a discussion thread concerning a recent book from myself and Christian Engström, Member of European Parliament, people were concerned. The book is titled “The Case For Copyright Reform”, and is a collection of the most relevant essays over the past year, as well as reproducing contributions from Mike Masnick, Ernesto and Michael Geist. (Did I mention it’s available for free download? Copy and seed.)

The political proposals in the book are also the ones carried by the Green group in the European Parliament, though they originate with the Pirate Party.

Extratorrent did a story on the book, and Reddit got a story linked there with a title saying “Copyright protection is suggested to be cut from 70 to 20 years from publication”. (Which is factually wrong – the proposal is to reduce from life plus 70 to a baseline five years, extendable to 20 through registration, limiting the monopoly to commercial uses only – but still.)

What strikes me as odd, and indefensible, are the reactions of resignation in the Reddit thread.

This is a selection of the highest-voted comments:

- Nice, but it won’t happen. Publishing companies would scream bloody murder.

- This would be fantastic but will never happen because companies have a vested interest in maintaining their ability to collect royalties indefinitely.

- They can suggest anything they like, but I really see no reason why the RIAA or MPAA would listen to anything but making it longer.

I am absolutely flabbergasted that this seems to be the prevailing view. When did people forget that legislators, and not corporations, have the final say over our laws?

The copyright industry is not a stakeholder in the copyright monopoly. They are a beneficiary. Of course they’ll want more benefits.

Who gives a rat’s ass what the copyright industries want?

Their interest is not the public interest. The only reason they have been getting their way in lawmaking is that legislators have believed – up until pretty much now – that this issue is completely peripheral in public opinion, so they haven’t cared about it at all, and they have ignored this field of policymaking to let it be run by easily-lobbied public servants.

To see people confuse corporations for legislators to this degree frustrates me. There is absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t hold legislators accountable for every single button they press – and let them know that it is us, not a special interest, that determine whether they keep or lose their job.

Failing that, one can also replace them entirely, as I set out to do with a movement that has now spread to 50+ countries. That also gets their attention. Guaranteed.

But no matter what, don’t ever accept the resigned position that the copyright industries determine law. They don’t. They’ve gotten away with wishlists because politicians haven’t cared. They do care when tens of thousands of people make noise, and we can do that. We know absolutely well that we’re capable of that and much more.

If the copyright industry collapses – who cares?

The job of every entrepreneur is to make money given the current constraints of society. They don’t get to dismantle civil liberties if they fail to make money – especially if they fail to make money. No entrepreneur has the right to shape society to guarantee themselves a profit.

There will always be culture, and the artists are doing better than ever. It’s more than time to rid our economy and our net of the burden of these parasitic middlemen – and don’t ever dare think you’re powerless to do exactly that.

Source: Why Are People Resigning Before The Copyright Industries’ Will?

The Court of The Hague in the Netherlands has been particularly busy this work with Pirate Bay-related cases.

Following an earlier court ruling ordering two of the country’s largest ISPs to block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay, the Court ordered a further five ISPs to block TPB IP addresses and 20 domain names Thursday. The Court then went on to make a decision that was perhaps even more controversial than the first.

The Dutch Pirate Party had been running a proxy service to facilitate access to the now-blocked Pirate Bay, but following pressure from anti-piracy group BREIN their activities were outlawed this week by the Court. The Pirate Party was ordered to shutdown its reverse proxy indefinitely and block Pirate Bay domains and IP-addresses from its generic proxy.

However, in a decision that raised eyebrows, Judge Chris Hensen also banned the Party from using their own website to list the locations of other websites that allow the public to circumvent the blockade.

This decision by Henson – which some observers believe amounts to a curtailment of freedom of speech – is not the first the Judge has made of this nature. In 2010, movie studio Eyeworks won its lawsuit against Dutch Usenet community FTD. In that verdict, Judge Hensen ruled that by allowing users to talk about a copyrighted movie’s location on Usenet, FTD was effectively publishing the movie as if they had actually hosted it on their own servers.

After the ruling it transpired that Judge Henson and Dirk Visser, the lawyer for the movie studio, had a closer relationship than had been expected. Visser, who also represented BREIN in their victory over Mininova, had been running courses for copyright specialists where Judge Hensen was once one of the teachers.

Of course, now Judge Hensen has delivered a similar ruling, his connections with Visser are being re-examined, not least by Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge who is absolutely scathing.

“This is truly mind-boggling: not only was the plaintiff and judge personally and closely acquainted, the plaintiff in a controversial copyright monopoly case was running a commercial anti-piracy outfit together with the judge in the case,” Falkvinge writes.

“Money was involved. Commercial interest was involved. The judge was, as it appears from this brochure for the quite expensive course, getting money. From the plaintiff. Shortly after the case. In a directly related matter. That makes the judge not only corrupt, but textbook corrupt,” Falkvinge adds.

Claims of bias have hounded many big copyright-related cases in recent years, but for whatever reason have never gained any traction. In 2009 following the conviction of the founders of The Pirate Bay, it was revealed that two of the four judges set to hear their appeal were members of pro-copyright groups. The Supreme Court eventually decided that this would not affect their judgment.

The year before it was revealed that police officer Jim Keyzer, the leader and key witness in the initial Pirate Bay investigation, had been recently employed by Warner Bros, one of the plaintiffs in the case. The controversy deepened when it was discovered that his employment with the studio was only temporary – he later returned to the police to head up an IT Crime unit.

This so-called revolving door phenomenon has raised its head time and again in the past couple of years. In March 2011, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell – a former RIAA lobbyist and anti-piracy company boss – delivered a helpful ruling for potential copyright trolls.

Then later that month it was revealed that a former music industry lobbyist had been appointed head of a unit dealing with copyright and enforcement issues at the European Commission.

During early May commenting on the case against Megaupload, law Professor Eric Goldman bemoaned “the revolving door between government and the content industry.”

Source: Pirate Bay ‘Censorship’ Judge is Corrupt, Claims Pirate Party Founder

We don't know much, but here are my predictions:

1. There's a lot more hyperbole to this story than reality.
2. The explosive would have either 1) been caught by pre-9/11 security, or 2) not been caught by post-9/11 security.
3. Nonetheless, it will be used to justify more invasive airport security.