Internet News

The European Commission has officially identified 19 major platforms and search engines to be targeted for compliance under its new internet censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Under the new rules, Very Large providers will be required to assess and mitigate the risk of 'misuse' of their services and the measures taken must be proportionate to that risk and subject to robust conditions and safeguards.

The EU Commission officially designated 17 Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) and two Very Large Online Search Engines (VLOSEs), each of which, according to the EC, reaches at least 45 million monthly active users.

The VLOPs are: Alibaba AliExpress, Amazon Store, Apple AppStore, Booking.com, Facebook, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Shopping, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube and German retailer Zalando.

The two VLOSEs are Bing and Google Search.

Following their designation, an EC statement explained, these companies will now have to comply, within four months, with the full set of new censorship rules under the DSA. Under the subheading Strong protection of minors, the EC listed the following directives:

• Platforms will have to redesign their systems to ensure a high level of privacy, security, and safety of minors;
• Targeted advertising based on profiling towards children is no longer permitted;
• Special risk assessments including for negative effects on mental health will have to be provided to the Commission four months after designation and made public at the latest a year later;
• Platforms will have to redesign their services, including their interfaces, recommender systems, terms and conditions, to mitigate these risks.

According to industry attorney Corey Silverstein of Silverstein Legal, the impact of the new designations and consequent obligations could be substantial because many of the platforms that have been designated as VLOPs and VLOSEs are frequently utilized by the adult entertainment industry.

Assuming these platforms decide to comply with the DSA, Silverstein told XBIZ, there may be major changes coming to what these platforms allow on their services within the EU.

This could end up leading to major content moderation and outright blocking of adult content in the EU, including the blocking of websites that display adult entertainment from being listed in search results.

It is also noted that as the larger adult platforms continue to grow, some may pass the EC's benchmark of having 45 million monthly active users, and therefore face the potential for future designation under the DSA, which could have even more direct impact on their users and creators.

The EARN IT Bill Is Seeking To Scan Our Messages and Photos.

In a free society, people should not have their private correspondence constantly examined. U.S. lawmakers, we would hope, understand that individuals have the right to a private conversation without the government looking over their shoulder.

So it's dismaying to see a group of U.S. Senators attempting for a third time to pass the EARN IT Act (S. 1207)--a law that could lead to suspicionless scans of every online message, photo, and hosted file. In the name of fighting crime, the EARN IT Act treats all internet users like we should be in a permanent criminal lineup, under suspicion for child abuse.

What The New "EARN IT" Does

The EARN IT Act creates an unelected government commission, stacks it with law enforcement personnel, and then tasks it with creating "best practices" for running an internet website or app. The act then removes nearly 30-year-old legal protections for users and website owners, allowing state legislatures to encourage civil lawsuits and prosecutions against those who don't follow the government's "best practices."

As long as they somehow tie changes in law to child sexual abuse, state lawmakers will be able to avoid longstanding legal protections, and pass new rules that allow for criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits against websites that don't give police special access to user messages and photos. Websites and apps that use end-to-end encryption to protect user privacy will be pressured to remove or compromise the security of their services, or they'll face prosecutions and lawsuits.

If EARN IT passes, we're likely to see state lawmakers step in and mandate scanning of messages and other files similar to the plan that Apple wisely walked away from last year.

There's no doubt the sponsors intend this bill to scan user messages, photos, and files, and they wrote it with that goal in mind. They even suggested specific scanning software that could be used on users in a document published last year. The bill also makes specific allowances to allow the use of encryption to constitute evidence in court against service providers.

Bill Language Purporting To Protect Encryption Doesn't Do The Job

Under pressure, the bill sponsors did add language that purports to protect encryption. But once you take a closer look, it's a shell game. The bill clearly leaves room to impose forms of "client-side scanning," which is a method of violating user privacy by sending data to law enforcement straight from user devices, before a message is encrypted. EFF has long held that client-side scanning violates the privacy promise of end-to-end encryption , even though it allows the encryption process to proceed in a narrow, limited sense. A 2021 paper by 10 leading technologists held that client-side scanners are a danger to democracy, amounting to " bugs in our pockets ."

The Chat-Scanning Software Being Pushed By This Bill Doesn't Work

But the available evidence shows that scanning software that looks for Child Sexual Abuse Material, or CSAM, is far from perfect. Creators of scanning software say they can't be fully audited, for legal and ethical reasons. But here's the evidence so far:

• Last year, a New York Times story showed how Google's CSAM scanners falsely accused two fathers of sending child pornography . Even after the dads were explicitly cleared by police, Google kept their accounts shut down.

• Data being sent to cops by the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)--the government agency that will be tasked with analyzing vastly more user data if EARN IT passes--is far from accurate. In 2020, the Irish police received 4,192 reports from NCMEC. Of those, only 852 (20.3%) were confirmed as actual CSAM . Only 9.7% of the reports were deemed to be "actionable."

• A Facebook study found that 75% of the messages flagged by its scanning system to detect child abuse material were not "malicious," and included messages like bad jokes and memes.

• LinkedIn reported 75 cases of suspected CSAM to EU authorities in 2021. After manual review, only 31 of those cases --about 41%--involved confirmed CSAM.

The idea of subjecting millions of people to false accusations of child abuse is horrific. NCMEC will export those false accusations to vulnerable communities around the world, where they can be wielded by police forces that have even less accountability than law enforcement in the United States. False accusations are a price that EARN IT supporters seem willing to pay.

We need your support to stop the EARN IT Act one more time. Digital rights supporters sent more than 200,000 messages to Congress to kill earlier versions of this bill. We've beaten it twice before, and we can do it again.

There are currently dangerous proposals that could mandate client-side scanning schemes in the U.K. and European Union , as well. But we don't need to resign ourselves to a world of constant surveillance. In democratic nations, supporters of a free, secure, and private internet can win--if we speak up now.

According to the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), tech companies themselves are responsible for deleting hate speech on social media in Germany, and face up to 50 million euro in fines if they don't. But it's left to their own discretion whether or not they block the often-anonymous users behind it.

Now Germany's coalition government wants to extend censorship controls of online content that the government does not like, both by blocking users who spread censorable speech through a court order, and forcing social media companies to reveal the person or group behind a perpetrator's profile.

The length of any account block would have to be proportionate and regard serious violations -- yet it would be left to the respective court to decide what exactly that means. An account holder must first be informed that their account could be blocked -- and have the chance to comment on the incident.

Montana lawmakers have passed a bill banning the social media app TikTok from operating in the state. The measure now goes to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte for his consideration.

The bill would prohibit downloads of TikTok in Montana and would fine any entity - an app store or TikTok itself $10,000 per day for each time someone is offered the ability to access the social media platform or download the app.

The state House voted 54-43 to pass the bill, which goes further than prohibitions in place in nearly half the states and the US federal government that prohibit TikTok on government devices. Montana already bans the app on state-owned devices.

The bill's supporters have admitted that they have no feasible plan for implementing the bill and that the bill's constitutionality will be decided by the courts.

TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, has been under intense scrutiny over user data being sent to the Chinese government and its use to distribute pro-Beijing propaganda and misinformation.

The US Congress is considering legislation that gives the Commerce Department the ability to restrict foreign threats on tech platforms.

Arcom is the French internet censor who is tasked with the censorship of porn websites. It has published a press release explaining its latest steps to block a group of prominent porn websites:

In accordance with article 23 of the law of July 30, 2020, Arcom gave formal notice on April 6, 2023 to Technius Ltd (eg XHamster.com) and Techpump Solutions SL (eg Porn300.com) to prevent access by minors to respectively one and two pornographic sites that they publish.

In addition, due to the failure of MG Freesites (eg pornhub.com) to comply with the formal notices issued on April 7, 2022, the president of the Paris court was petitioned to order the main ISPs to prevent access to two sites published by this company.

Protecting young audiences from inappropriate content in the digital sphere is a priority for Arcom, within the framework set by the legislator.

The dictatorship in Turkmenistan does not get a lot of media and scholarly attention, although it is more than worthy of it. In the 2023 Freedom in the World Index, the country ranked in the bottom three, behind only war-torn Syria and ahead of North Korea. The issue of internet censorship is particularly acute in Turkmenistan. In 2016, the media freedom organization Reporters without Borders listed the country as one of the enemies of the internet due to its heavy censorship and information control policies. The internet speed in Turkmenistan is the slowest in the world. The authorities arrest citizens who use VPN apps to access censored content.

Between 2021 and 2022, a team of computer scientists conducted the first and only large-scale research on internet censorship in Turkmenistan, in which they tested 15.5 million domains for censorship and found out that over 122,000 domains are blocked.

Full research results are available here .

Last week, a German court ruled that Uberspace is liable for hosting the website of youtube-dl, an open-source tool that allows people to download content from YouTube. The owner of the hosting company warns that this ridiculous and devastating verdict opens the door to privatized censorship.

In 2020, the RIAA infuriated many players in the open source community by targeting YouTube-ripping tool youtube-dl.

The RIAA sent a takedown notice to GitHub, alleging that the software bypassed technological protection measures, in violation of the DMCA.

GitHub initially complied but later changed course. After consulting legal experts, including those at the EFF, it restored the youtube-dl repository.

GitHub also launched a million-dollar defense fund to assist developers in similar disputes.

...read the full article from torrentfreak.com

The draft Media Bill will include measures bringing mainstream video-on-demand (VoD) services consumed in the UK - such as Netflix and Disney+ - under a new Ofcom content code, to protect audiences from a wider range of harmful material - such as misleading health claims. The latest research from Ofcom indicates that traditional 'linear' TV viewing - where viewers watch programmes broadcast at a scheduled time usually via terrestrial or satellite - is down more than 25% since 2011, and 68% among 16-24s.

Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer said:

Technology has revolutionised the way people enjoy TV and radio. The battle to attract and retain audiences has never been more fierce. British content and production is world leading but changes to viewing habits have put traditional broadcasters under unprecedented pressure.

These new laws will level the playing field with global streaming giants, ensuring they meet the same high standards we expect from public service broadcasters and that services like iPlayer, All4 and ITVX are easy to find however you watch TV.

The Media Bill will level the playing field between public service broadcasters and video-on-demand services. For the first time, UK-focused mainstream VoD services will be brought under rules similar to those that already apply to linear TV. It will mean that UK audiences, especially children, are better and more consistently protected from harmful material.

VoD viewers will now be able to formally complain to Ofcom, and the Bill will strengthen Ofcom's duty to assess audience protection measures on VoDs such as age ratings and viewer guidance. Ofcom will have more robust powers to investigate and take action to enforce standards if they consider it appropriate, including issuing fines of up to £250,000 and - in the most serious and repeated cases - restricting a service's availability in the UK.

The Connecticut state legislature plans to pass Senate Bill 6410, which would see the creation of a censorship board. The board would study online harassment of individuals and government officials and recommend laws to censor speech. The board would have nine members, four of them from the minority Republican Party and presumably five from the Democratic Party.

The bill states:

Such assessment shall include, but need not be limited to,

1. short term and long term effects of harassing behaviors online on elected officials, public officials and residents of this state,

2. what state or municipal action is needed to address negative online behaviors that consider a citizen's right to freedom of speech versus an individual's right to be free from harassment including, but not limited to, potential changes in state law concerning additional penalties or enforcement of online harassment, and

3. establishing guidelines for the reporting of online harassment of elected state and municipal officials that find a balance between making elected officials accessible to the people whom they serve and protecting them from abusive, offensive, or threatening online harassment.

The bill was approved by a committee on March 17 and now awaits a vote in the house.