The New York Times' technology blog, BITS, discusses why DMCA takedown notices being sent to universities around the country are stupid. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a party that feels its content is being infringed need only suggest that infringement may be going on and may then send a "takedown notice" to the infringing party's internet service provider. There are no evidentiary requirements and no standard of doubt (no "probable cause," no "reasonable doubt," not even "preponderance of the evidence"), so the owner of a copyrighted work can send a takedown notice — and the ISP can comply — even if the content isn't legally infringing. Under the DMCA, an accusation of infringement is enough to get ISPs — which largely don't know the law and are afraid of getting into legal wrangling — to turn off the Internet pipes to the infringer.

From the article:

Many universities pass those letters directly on to students without questioning the veracity of the allegations. The R.I.A.A. in particular follows up some of those notices by threatening legal action and forcing alleged file-sharers into a financial settlement.

But the study, released Thursday by Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor, Michael Piatek a graduate student, and Arvind Krishnamurthy, a research assistant professor, all at the University of Washington, argues that perhaps those takedown notices should be viewed more skeptically.

The paper finds that there is a serious flaw in how these trade groups finger alleged file-sharers. It also suggests that some people might be getting improperly accused of sharing copyrighted content, and could even be purposely framed by other users.

The RIAA and MPAA, the trade organizations for the music and movie industries, respectively, have successfully lobbied to have Congress place line-items into federal university funding legislation requiring public universities to police their networks for copyright infringers and/or allow the RIAA and MPAA to have access to their networks to catch infringers. This is incredibly stupid because of (1) the privacy issues concerned (after all, FERPA strictly limits disclosure of student records to only the student, if the student is over 18) and (2) the fact that colleges are not in the business of policing for copyright violations. The article demonstrates how the RIAA and MPAA's own tools for finding violations can be easily misdirected, resulting in false positives.

Last year, the University of Nebraska agreed to comply with RIAA requests to hunt down file-sharers — for a price. The university estimated that it cost them $11 per accusation to find the culprit, and that if the RIAA wanted them to do a job that wasn't theirs to begin with, the university would charge the RIAA for it.

Posted by Mark at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Wall Street Journal published a particularly nauseating opinion piece yesterday — so nauseating, in fact, that I felt compelled to talk about it. It's called "Why We Went to Iraq," and it is authored by Fouad Ajami, someone who bills himself as a foreign policy expert.

Ajami's complaint begins with Scott McClellan, who last week suggested that the Iraq War was one of choice, not necessity. Ajami argues:

The nation was gripped by legitimate concern over gathering dangers in the aftermath of 9/11. Kabul and the war against the Taliban had not sufficed, for those were Arabs who struck America on 9/11. A war of deterrence had to be waged against Arab radicalism, and Saddam Hussein had drawn the short straw. He had not ducked, he had not scurried for cover. He openly mocked America's grief, taunted its power.

While lamenting the way that war critics have "launched a new attack on the origins of the war," Ajami simultaneously creates a brand-new justification for the Iraq War. Previous justifications provided by the Bush administration for invading Iraq included:

• Saddam Hussein provided material support to al-Qaeda
• Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa
• Saddam Hussein was developing biological and chemical weapons
• Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons
• Saddam Hussein was in violation of U.N. Resolution 1441
• Saddam Hussein is trying to take over the Middle East
• Saddam Hussein threw the weapons inspectors out before they had finished their job

Points one, two, four, six, and seven have been debunked outright. Saddam stopped his nuclear program exactly when we thought he did: after the Persian Gulf War. Saddam never had any desire to take over the Middle East; he was perfectly content to run his ego-centric dictatorship. What most Republican students of foreign policy don't understand is that not all dictators are the same. Different dictators have different reasons for ruling. Some, like Saddam, or Turkmenbashi the Great, want to have their own personality cult. Others, like Adolf Hitler, wanted to take over the world. It is for the reason above that Saddam did not cooperate with al-Qaeda: Saddam's was a crazy secular dictatorship; al-Qaeda wished to impose a crazy theocratic dictatorship on the Middle East, which would have been a threat to Saddam's power; thus, the enemy of Saddam's enemy was not his friend simply because they had a shared enemy. It's not as simple as that.

Bush claimed, per point seven, that Saddam threw the U.N. weapons inspectors out before their job was done. It was actually President Bush who told the U.N. weapons inspectors to leave Iraq, and then claimed it was Saddam who had thrown them out, providing another wonderful pretense for war. Bush, the brilliant conflict resolver, felt that the time for diplomacy had ended.

With regard to point three, Saddam did use chemical weapons — but they were chemical weapons the United States gave him back when we were best buddies in the 1980s. (Here's a picture of Saddam Hussein shaking hands with Reagan Administration special envoy Donald Rumsfeld in 1983.)

As for U.N. Resolution 1441, Iraq was in violation of that, but so were some ninety other countries.

Now, back to the op-ed. In three sentences, Ajami syntatically links "9/11" and "Saddam Hussein" the same way the Bush administration did in 2002. First, he invokes "9/11" and the "gathering dangers" thereafter. 9/11 provides the rationale for the War on Terr'. It was not enough, says Ajami, to go after the people that attacked us; we then needed to go after the Arabs that didn't attack us! What a brilliant military strategy: attack people who haven't attacked us! Let the Canadian, Australian, and Azerbaijanian Wars begin!

Okay, okay, so the real policy at work here is preemptive warfare, and in the history of war, it hardly ever goes well. Saddam Hussein is a metonymy for "Arab radicalism," therefore he must be attacked. Why him specifically? Ajami isn't quite clear on this; he suggests that Saddam "had drawn the short straw," leading one to believe that we picked Saddam at random after blindfolding Paul Wolfowitz, spinning him in a circle, and then giving him a thumbtack to place on a giant world map. Too bad he didn't stick the tack into Micronesia; that mission against someone who never attacked us would have been accomplished much faster!

There's one problem with the idea that Saddam Hussein represents "Arab radicalism." This problem is that he doesn't. Conservative theologians have struggled for six years to come up with a word to describe the kinds of people who want to attack us. Because these conservatives want democracy to be rammed into the Middle East like a battering ram, their requirements for a word to describe the people who attack us must relate to the Middle East; if we used the word "terrorist," we'd have to invade the Basque country of Spain. Ajami uses the phrase "Arab radicalism," which sounds great, but doesn't describe very much. Iranians, for example, aren't ethnically Arab, but their government still doesn't like us very much. Also, what qualifies an Arab as radical? Saddam Hussein is a crazy dictator like any other crazy dictator. It just so happens that he's in the Middle East and sits on a honking pile of oil.

And what about the ethnic Arabs who aren't Muslim? Another important &em and implicit — requirement of a definition of "terrorist" is that it must refer to Muslims. Enter the phrases "Islamofascist" and "Islamist," the latter of which Ajami uses in his op-ed. "Islamofascist" has very little meaning; it's a P.R. term designed to conflate Islam and fascism, the latter of which Americans know (or think they know) a lot about. "I may not know what an Islamofascist is, but I know what a fascist is! It stands to reason that they're the same thing! Let's kill them!"

The word "Islamist" similarly has no meaning and is actually insulting to Muslims. What is an Islamist? Someone who believes in Islam? Does it follow, therefore, that people who believe in Islam are terrorists? Would we have called Timothy McVeigh a "Christianist"? Using Ajami's logic, we should, since McVeigh's attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995 was terrorism based in his "radical" Christian faith.

Ajami suggests that the United States' policy of preemptive warfare has frightened enough Arab states into combatting terrorism in the Middle East: "If Islamism is on the ropes, if the regimes in the saddle in key Arab states now show greater resolve in taking on the forces of radicalism, no small credit ought to be given to this American project in Iraq." Ajami has here created a conditional statement: "If X conditions are met, then Y results follow." The counterfactual of a conditional statement is a defense against that statement: "If X conditions were not met, then Y results did not follow." Ajami's statement is, "If Islamism is on the ropes [and] if the regimes in the saddle in key Arab states now show greater resolve in taking on the forces of radicalism, [then] no small credit ought to be given to this American project in Iraq."

The question is: are Arab states showing greater resolve in fighting terrorism? Well, we have Iraq, which is currently engaged in its own in-fighting, notably Muqtada al-Sadr against the rest of the government. In Iran, we have Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, who materially supports Shi'a fighters in Iraq. We have Lebanon, which elected members of the terrorist group Hezbollah to the Lebanese Parliament in 2005. We have Saudi Arabia, which, as far as we know, still supports terrorism. In July, 2006, Lebanon and Israel got involved in a war in which Hezbollah scored a moral victory merely by surviving the onslaught of the Israeli military. We have ignored Afghanistan since 2002, and as a result, the Taliban as just as powerful there as they ever were. So — has "this American project in Iraq" put "Islamism on the ropes"? Certainly not. If anything, it has reduced America's diplomatic credentials abroad. America is now not the country of reasoned talks and brokering, but the country of swaggering, militant ignorance that shoots first and asks questions later. Thanks, Iraq War.

Even in numerical terms — in which Ajami claims that terrorists have been "bloodied in Iraq" — reports from the CIA, NSA, and Department of State show that terrorist activities have increased since the start of the Iraq War. Terrorists don't seem to be particularly intimidated by a country whose military is stretched paper-thin in a country in which it doesn't seem likely it will ever leave gracefully.

Ajami also takes a new tack on the WMD argument: "The claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were to prove incorrect, but they were made in good faith." So we were wrong, but we meant well. The road to Hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. Also, there is plenty of indication that the claims about WMDs were made in bad faith, with the administration picking intelligence that it liked and ignored the intelligence it didn't, regardless of how correct this intelligence was.

He then proceeds to say, Hey, so what if we kept on changing our rationale for the war as each rationale was successively proven wrong or misguided? "The aims of practically every war always shift with the course of combat, and with historical circumstances." He cites the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln's focus on slavery as an example of how a war against secession became a war against slavery.

Except that it didn't. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to piss off the Confederacy. Personally, Lincoln had no problem with slavery and he would just as soon have avoided discussion of The Peculiar Institution altogether.

Ajami closes by suggesting that our war in Iraq spared "people of threats and dangers." But it is extremely disingenuous to suggest that our Iraq War policy has preventing more domestic terrorism. There is no evidence to suggest that anything we did or did not do in the War on Terr' has prevented another terrorist attack. Using Ajami's logic, it could have been appointing John Roberts to the Supreme Court that has prevented another terrorist attack. It could have been Ruben Studdard winning American Idol that has prevented another terrorist attack. That we invaded Iraq — a country that hadn't threatened to attack us — has made us safer somehow is a dubious assumption that has little factual support.

But who needs facts? Ajami doesn't! "Five months from now, the American public will vote on this war, in the most dramatic and definitive of ways. There will be people who heed Ambassador Crocker's admonition. And there will be others keen on retelling how we made our way to Iraq." Ajami is blissfully ignorant of the extreme irony that he himself is one of those people desperately retelling how we made our way to Iraq, hoping beyond hope that people's memories are as transient as he thinks they are for them to believe newer, more made-up stories about why we got into Iraq in the first place.

Posted by Mark at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Richard D. Erlich

"Pronatalism" is a word we don't hear much any more, not for a generation or so, but it's an important word and needs to be recycled.

"Pronatalism" refers to social policies encouraging the production and successful raising of children. Often these policies have included conscious policies on population; maybe more often, pronatalism has been incorporated into religious beliefs and from there into law and custom.

It doesn't matter much where pronatalist practices come from. "Cultural evolution" is more than a figure of speech: customs that function to help cultures survive will tend to be retained the way useful genetic traits are retained — and pronatalism, by its nature, has been useful for survival.

Until recently. Until humankind's population went into the billions, and the unchecked reproduction of humans became a threat to human species-survival. Until some cultures became somewhat democratic and individualistic, and the press of population put stresses on democratic principles and individuality. It has always been difficult to argue that any individual human is special; the argument becomes almost impossible when there are over six billion other human individuals. "Freedom" has been defined informally as the right to swing your arms until you endanger someone else's nose; some place along the line, population density gets to where there's little room for figurative arm swinging.

Alternatively, an individual human has the same right as any other animal to urinate in the local stream; the people of a small village probably have the right to put their excrement in the river; towns and cities, however, have no right to dump in the river untreated sewage, poisoning decreasing supplies of water.

More of that later. For now keep in mind that surviving societies often have built in a strong degree of pronatalism.

You need to know this if you're to understand the underpinning of the sex laws and "mores" of the United States, including our rules on marriage and attitudes toward the wide range of sexual activities.

Start with obvious questions: Why would people care about occasional or even frequent masturbation in private? Why were there ever laws against oral or anal sex, or just about anything done between or among two or more consenting adults in private? The short and most basic answer, one that underlies both religious and secular, official and popular-culture prohibitions, is "pronatalism."

Humans are highly sexual animals, and across a significant population people will practice all sorts of sexuality. Cultures, though, can evolve ideologies and customs that tend to direct sexuality into practices that are reproductive and nurturing. Consciously or unconsciously, societies can try to limit sex to vaginal sexual intercourse between fertile couples who are likely to conceive, bear, and then raise babies.

Cultures can try to limit sex to "making babies" by people who'll stick around to raise babies: for a very important example, limiting approved sex to married heterosexual couples who have conception as a goal — and, hence, don't try to prevent conception and who avoid sex when the woman is menstruating.

Sound familiar? It should if you know the traditional rules for Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews.

Under a doctrine of pronatalism, such rules make sense, and pronatalism itself makes a lot of sense in military, nationalistic, and economic terms.

Pronatalism becomes a bad idea when it's a game many societies play and the human population rises rapidly, when the standard of living rises enough among many of those societies that they strain the environment.

Think of a billion or two Chinese and Indians starting to live like rich Americans.

Pronatalism in our time makes sense for individual countries that want to maintain their eminence; pronatalism makes sense for older generations who want to retire and be supported by lots of young workers.

For the human species, and for humans who like freedom, pronatalism is a problem.

"Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it" (Genesis 1.28) was good doctrine, and it may be the one commandment we humans have fulfilled; but it is fulfilled now, and it's time to cut back.

We — we humans generally — need to move rapidly toward zero growth in our population, which means rethinking the laws, policies, customs, and attitudes based in pronatalism.

People are going to have sex, but it doesn't have to be reproductive sex; and contraception can be very low-tech, inexpensive, and almost as effective as abstinence in preventing sexually-transmitted diseases. To start, we need a campaign to "Wrap that Willy," making condoms readily available and condom-use a manly thing to do, and a womanly thing to demand.

For other things to do, look at the pronatalist aspects of human cultures, and try to figure out practical ways to encourage reproductive restraint.

Richard D. Erlich is a professor emeritus in English at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio), currently living in Ventura County, California.

Posted by Mark at 9:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The "maverick" Sen. John McCain's spokesperson said today that McCain will command the same powers of warrantless wiretapping and "inherent" authority that President Bush has argued for:

[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]

We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.

According to Wired's Threat Level blog, "The Article II citation is key, since it refers to President Bush's longstanding arguments that the president has nearly unlimited powers during a time of war. The administration's analysis went so far as to say the Fourth Amendment did not apply inside the United States in the fight against terrorism, in one legal opinion from 2001."

A quick look at Article II of the U.S. Constitution will demonstrate that warrantless wiretapping is not one of the powers given to the president. The theory that he can collect foreign intelligence initially comes from his authority as "commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States," as well as several Supreme Court opinions. The president's case for warrantless wiretapping rests largely on United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972), which mandated that the president does not have the authority to conduct domestic wiretapping "without the detached judgment of a neutral magistrate." Interestingly, President Nixon made exactly the same argument as President Bush; namely, that "the surveillance was lawful, though conducted without prior judicial approval, as a reasonable exercise of the President's power (exercised through the Attorney General) to protect the national security." Nixon also made the assertion that the understanding of the technical parts of electronic surveillance were beyond federal judges, meaning they would be unqualified to judge the qualities of such surveillance; former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said as much when he intimated that federal judges weren't qualified to adjudicate issues of terrorism.

Here's another good one: "These Fourth Amendment freedoms [from "unreasonable search and seizure"] cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances may be conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch. The Fourth Amendment does not contemplate the executive officers of Government as neutral and disinterested magistrates." For the president to argue that he is allowed to conduct wholly domestic electronic surveillance -- as is the case with the telecom wiretapping -- without a warrant contravenes the language of the very case he uses to bolster his opinion! Bush's minions are content to quote parts of cases that support the president's arguments and are equally content not to mention that there are vast swaths of the same cases that contradict the president's statements of "inherent" authority. Ultimately, as with the Youngstown steel case, the court decided against granting the president his crazy, self-proclaimed powers. "We recognize, as we have before, the constitutional basis of the President's domestic security role, but we think it must be exercised in a manner compatible with the Fourth Amendment," wrote the court in the 1972 case. "In this case we hold that this requires an appropriate prior warrant procedure." The case, by the way, was decided 8-0 (newly-minted Justice Rehnquist, formerly of the Nixon Justice Department, did not take part in the case). There was no hesitation or ambivalence on the part of the Supreme Court in this matter. In an unequivocal, unified voice, it declared, "The president has no constitutional authority to conduct warrantless domestic surveillance."

All this is moot if McCain's spokesman is not speaking for him, but I don't think so. Over the years, McCain -- who was once truly a "maverick" in the Republican party -- has normalized his beliefs. After his failed 2000 presidential bid, McCain surely realized that the key to winning the Republican nomination was falling into lock-step with the Republican mainstream. Sadly, the Republican mainstream is exactly the wrong place to be on civil liberties matters, as Republicans in the White House are willing to sacrifice constitutional guarantees in exchange for security.

Posted by Mark at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)