Google Keeps Tahrir Square Sex Abuse Video Online, But Still Bans Reuters Anti-Press Complaint from Its Search

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 14 -- That Google's YouTube refused to take down the video of a sexual assault in Cairo's Tahrir Square despite the victim's requests is taken by some as their commitment to free expression and against censorship.  And perhaps it is.

  Sisi's spokesperson said, "The Egyptian embassy in Washington DC and a number of Egyptian authorities, at the direction of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, have requested the YouTube administration to remove the video of the sexual assault victim. This came in response to her wish, which she expressed during the president's visit to her yesterday at the hospital to check on her condition.”

   Google said versions of the video are newsworthy, and they are.

   But consider this: Google has allowed a bogus Digital Millennium Copyright Act filing by Reuters' UN bureau chiefto ban from its Search a "for the record" anti-Press complaint Reuters filed with the UN. 

  By contrast, Google fought in court to try to keep online "Innocence of Muslims" by Mark Basseley Youssef.  It was certainly a stretch to say that bit actor Cindy Garcia briefly appearing in a film is an "author" for purposes of copyright law.

  But it is a travesty to say that copyright covers and can take-down a "for the record" complaint e-mailed to Stephane Dujarric, the UN's then supervisor of Media Accreditation now  UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson on March 10, click here for more on that, and here for, yes, a YouTube video not yet banned from Google's Search. 

 Back on January 7, Google's "Global Head of Free Expression" Ross LaJeunesse met at the UN  with Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson. See UN notice, saved here.

  It is ironic: most recently regarding the UN, Google allowed a censorship-related leaked document to be blocked from its Search, based on a bad faith complaint by Reuters bureau chief under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

  So what was LaJeunesse at the UN to discuss: more censorship? 

  There are further ironies. Prior to lobbying for Google, LaJeunesse worked for California's then-Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, who 13 months ago was given an award by the United Nations Correspondents Association. This is the group which tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN for its reporting on Sri Lanka -- a topic on which Eliasson now leads up the UN's post-failure "Rights Upfront" initiative. 

   While free press protections are in some ways advanced in the United States, as the Free UN Coalition for Access has begun highlighting, the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act can be and has been used as an end-run attack on freedom of the press.

(Another irony: from UN transcripts of Eliasson's press conference, the "Free UN Coalition for Access" introductionwas omitted, while the UN's Censorship Alliance was left in, click here for that.)

    Bigger picture, as exemplified by an August 14, 2013 bad faith complaint to Google by Reuters' UN bureau chief Louis Charbonneau, DMCA's provisions for "take-down" or blocking of information with no prior judicial review allow for abuse.

   Leaked documents used in an investigative story can be blocked, as the Reuters' complaint to Google blocked from Google's search its bureau chief's e-mail to the UN seeking to get Inner City Press thrown out. This is a perversion of the concept of copyright (as well as a contradictory argument for Reuters or anyone in journalism to be making, that such documents should be taken down or blocked.)

   In Chile, for example, any such take-down requires the requester to get a court order. But DMCA provides, and Google allowed, blocking based on a non-reviewed, bad faith complaint.

  As the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry told Inner City Press about the case:

"Unfortunately, it is all too easy for a copyright holder (assuming that the person that sent this notice actually held copyright in the email) to abuse the DMCA to take down content and stifle legitimate speech. As countries outside the US consider adopting DMCA-like procedures, they must make sure they include strong protections for free speech, such as significant penalties for takedown abuse."

  Along with other pro-corporate provisions, TPP would internationalize this abuse of copyright to undermine freedom of the press.  

 If this remains precedent, what else could come down?

  Why not an email from Iran, for example, to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency? Why not a sanctions filing by a country? Here is Reuters logic, accepted if only automatically by Google:

The copyrighted material is a private email I wrote in April 2012 and for which I never gave permission to be published. It has been published on a blog and appears in on the first page of search results for my name and the firm I work for, Reuters. It can be seen here: http://www.innercitypress.com/reutersLC3unmalu.pdf

  But this is true of ANY leaked document: it can be said that the entity or person exposed "never gave permission [for it] to be published." Does that mean Google can or should block search access to it?

  Can a complaint to a Media Accreditation official against a competitor legitimately be considered "private"? In any event, the DMCA is not about protecting privacy.

  Iran or North Korea could say a filing or status report they make with the IAEA is "private" and was not intended to be published. Would Google, receiving a DMCA filing, block access to the information on, say, Reuters.com?

  Charbonneau's bad-faith argument says his complaint to the UN was "published on a blog." Is THAT what Reuters claims makes it different that publication in some other media?

  The logic of Reuters' and Charbonneau's August 14, 2013 filing with Google, put online via the ChillingEffects.org project, is profoundly anti free press.

  The fact that Google accepts or didn't check, to remain in the DMCA Safe Harbor, the filing makes it even worse. The request to take-down wasn't made to InnerCityPress.com or its server -- it would have been rejected. But banning a page from Search has the same censoring effect.

  The US has a regime to protect freedom of the press, and against prior restraint. But this is a loophole, exploited cynically by Reuters. What if a media conducted a long investigation of a mayor, fueled by a leaked email. When the story was published, could the Mayor make a Reuters-like filing with Google and get it blocked?

  Here is the text of Charbonneau's communication to the UN's top Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit official Stephane Dujarric and MALU's manager, to which he claimed "copyright" and for now has banned from Google's Search:

Hi Isabelle and Stephane,

I just wanted to pass on for the record that I was just confronted by Matt Lee in the DHL auditorium in very hostile fashion a short while ago (there were several witnesses, including Giampaolo). He's obviously gotten wind that there's a movement afoot to expel him from the UNCA executive committee, though he doesn't know the details yet. But he was going out of his way to be as intimidating and aggressive as possible towards me, told me I "disgust" him, etc.

In all my 20+ years of reporting I've never been approached like that by a follow journalist in any press corps, no matter how stressful things got. He's become someone who's making it very hard for me and others in the UN press to do our jobs. His harassment of fellow reporters is reaching a new fever pitch.

I just thought you should know this.

Cheers,

Lou
Louis Charbonneau
Bureau Chief. United Nations
Reuters News Thomson Reuters reuters. com

This email was sent to you by Thomson Reuters, the global news and information company.

"UNCA" in the for-now banned e-mail is the United Nations Correspondents Association. The story developed here, as to Sri Lanka; here is a sample pick-up in Italian, to which we link and give full credit, translated into English (NOT for now by Google)...

  
   

Google Wanted Video "Innocence of Muslims" Up, But UN Complaint Banned from Search by Reuters' Digital Millennium Copyright Act Filing

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 27 -- That Google's YouTube fought in court to try to keep "Innocence of Muslims" by Mark Basseley Youssef on the Internet is taken by some as their commitment to free expression and against censorship. 

   But consider this: Google has allowed a bogus Digital Millennium Copyright Act filing by Reuters' UN bureau chief to ban from its Search a "for the record" anti-Press complaint Reuters filed with the UN. 

   It is certainly a stretch to say that bit actor Cindy Garcia briefly appearing in a film is an "author" for purposes of copyright law.

  But it is a travesty to say that copyright covers and can take-down a "for the record" complaint e-mailed to Stephane Dujarric, the UN's then supervisor of Media Accreditation now set to become UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson on March 10, click here for more on that, andhere for, yes, a YouTube video not yet banned from Google's Search. 

 Back on January 7, Google's "Global Head of Free Expression" Ross LaJeunesse met at the UN  with Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson. See UN notice, saved here.

  It is ironic: most recently regarding the UN, Google allowed a censorship-related leaked document to be blocked from its Search, based on a bad faith complaint by Reuters bureau chief under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

  So what is LaJeunesse at the UN to discuss: more censorship? 

  There are further ironies. Prior to lobbying for Google, LaJeunesse worked for California's then-Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger, who 13 months ago was given an award by the United Nations Correspondents Association. This is the group which tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN for its reporting on Sri Lanka -- a topic on which Eliasson now leads up the UN's post-failure "Rights Upfront" initiative. 

   While free press protections are in some ways advanced in the United States, as the Free UN Coalition for Access has begun highlighting, the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act can be and has been used as an end-run attack on freedom of the press.

(Another irony: from UN transcripts of Eliasson's press conference, the "Free UN Coalition for Access" introductionwas omitted, while the UN's Censorship Alliance was left in, click here for that.)

    Bigger picture, as exemplified by an August 14, 2013 bad faith complaint to Google by Reuters' UN bureau chief Louis Charbonneau, DMCA's provisions for "take-down" or blocking of information with no prior judicial review allow for abuse.

   Leaked documents used in an investigative story can be blocked, as the Reuters' complaint to Google blocked from Google's search its bureau chief's e-mail to the UN seeking to get Inner City Press thrown out. This is a perversion of the concept of copyright (as well as a contradictory argument for Reuters or anyone in journalism to be making, that such documents should be taken down or blocked.)

   In Chile, for example, any such take-down requires the requester to get a court order. But DMCA provides, and Google allowed, blocking based on a non-reviewed, bad faith complaint.

  As the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry told Inner City Press about the case:

"Unfortunately, it is all too easy for a copyright holder (assuming that the person that sent this notice actually held copyright in the email) to abuse the DMCA to take down content and stifle legitimate speech. As countries outside the US consider adopting DMCA-like procedures, they must make sure they include strong protections for free speech, such as significant penalties for takedown abuse."

  Along with other pro-corporate provisions, TPP would internationalize this abuse of copyright to undermine freedom of the press.  

 If this remains precedent, what else could come down?

  Why not an email from Iran, for example, to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency? Why not a sanctions filing by a country? Here is Reuters logic, accepted if only automatically by Google:

The copyrighted material is a private email I wrote in April 2012 and for which I never gave permission to be published. It has been published on a blog and appears in on the first page of search results for my name and the firm I work for, Reuters. It can be seen here: http://www.innercitypress.com/reutersLC3unmalu.pdf

  But this is true of ANY leaked document: it can be said that the entity or person exposed "never gave permission [for it] to be published." Does that mean Google can or should block search access to it?

  Can a complaint to a Media Accreditation official against a competitor legitimately be considered "private"? In any event, the DMCA is not about protecting privacy.

  Iran or North Korea could say a filing or status report they make with the IAEA is "private" and was not intended to be published. Would Google, receiving a DMCA filing, block access to the information on, say, Reuters.com?

  Charbonneau's bad-faith argument says his complaint to the UN was "published on a blog." Is THAT what Reuters claims makes it different that publication in some other media?

  The logic of Reuters' and Charbonneau's August 14, 2013 filing with Google, put online via the ChillingEffects.org project, is profoundly anti free press.

  The fact that Google accepts or didn't check, to remain in the DMCA Safe Harbor, the filing makes it even worse. The request to take-down wasn't made to InnerCityPress.com or its server -- it would have been rejected. But banning a page from Search has the same censoring effect.

  The US has a regime to protect freedom of the press, and against prior restraint. But this is a loophole, exploited cynically by Reuters. What if a media conducted a long investigation of a mayor, fueled by a leaked email. When the story was published, could the Mayor make a Reuters-like filing with Google and get it blocked?

  Here is the text of Charbonneau's communication to the UN's top Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit official Stephane Dujarric and MALU's manager, to which he claimed "copyright" and for now has banned from Google's Search:

Hi Isabelle and Stephane,

I just wanted to pass on for the record that I was just confronted by Matt Lee in the DHL auditorium in very hostile fashion a short while ago (there were several witnesses, including Giampaolo). He's obviously gotten wind that there's a movement afoot to expel him from the UNCA executive committee, though he doesn't know the details yet. But he was going out of his way to be as intimidating and aggressive as possible towards me, told me I "disgust" him, etc.

In all my 20+ years of reporting I've never been approached like that by a follow journalist in any press corps, no matter how stressful things got. He's become someone who's making it very hard for me and others in the UN press to do our jobs. His harassment of fellow reporters is reaching a new fever pitch.

I just thought you should know this.

Cheers,

Lou
Louis Charbonneau
Bureau Chief. United Nations
Reuters News Thomson Reuters reuters. com

This email was sent to you by Thomson Reuters, the global news and information company.

"UNCA" in the for-now banned e-mail is the United Nations Correspondents Association. The story developed here, as to Sri Lanka; here is a sample pick-up this past weekend in Italian, to which we link and give full credit, translated into English (NOT for now by Google) --

The fool of Reuters to the UN

by Mahesh - 12/27/2013 -calls for the removal of a letter from the head of his bureau at the United Nations, pursuing a copyright infringement on the part of the competition
Try to make out a small competitor from the UN press room and then, when these publish proof of intrigue, invokes the copyright to release a letter from compromising the network.

MOLESTA-AGENCY  Inner City Press is a small non-profit agency covering the work of the United Nations for years, with an original cut, which become distasteful to many. Unlike other matching its founder master sent never tires of asking account of inconsistencies and contradictions and often refers to unpleasant situations involving colleagues and their reportage, too often twisted to obvious political contingencies.

THE LAST CAVITY – In this case the clutch is born when Matthew Lee, Inner City Press ever since he founded and made famous in the 90 's, challenged the screening of "Lies Agreed Upon" in the auditorium of the United Nations, a filmaccio of propaganda in which the Sri Lankan regime tries to deny the now tested massacres (and destroyed by International Crisis Group). In the piece, in which denounced the incident, Lee also announced that the screening was organized by the President of the United Nations Correspondents (UNCA), Italian Giampaolo Pioli, skipping the normal consultation procedure for this kind of events. Pioli then, was also accused of being in a conflict of interest, given that he rented an apartment in New York an apartment to the Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in Sri Lanka, named Palitha Kohona and is suspected of war crimes.

TRY WITH THE COPYRIGHT- So he comes to the letter with which Louis Charbonneau, Reuters bureau chief at the United Nations, wrote to the Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit (MALU) calling for the ouster of Lee, which the UN being there for years as his colleagues, but we see that this was not done. Lee, however, comes into possession of the letter and publish it, and then writes to Google millantando Charbonneau the copyright on the letter and asking for removal pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That is a bit like if a company request the removal of a compromising document from a journalistic investigation, in the name of copyright, a claim clearly absurd and disingenuous.

HARASSMENT AND THREATS- In the letter published, Charbonneau complained about the aggressive behavior of Lee and cited among the witnesses to cases where Lee had been "aggressive" towards him even Pioli.Lee with that piece has gained throughout a hail of protests from Sri Lanka and an investigation by the UNCA, along with death threats and other well-known amenities the refugees away from the clutches of the regime, but it is still there. Behold then the brilliant idea of Charbonneau, improperly used copyright law to censor the objectionable publications to a colleague and competitor. Pity that Lee has already resisted successfully in similar cases, in 2008 was the same Google to remove your site from being indexed in the news in its search engines, it is unclear what impetus behind, only to regret it soon after that even Fox News had cried scandal.

   

As France Bans Even Peaceful Protest, Ban Ki-moon Has No "Specific" Comment

By Matthew Russell Lee

 

UNITED NATIONS, September 21 -- It has become a commonplace for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon or his spokespeople on his behalf to say that people have a right to peaceful protest that governments should respect.

 

But when Inner City Press asked Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky on September 21 about French Interior Minister Interior Minister Manuel Valls prohibiting any and all protest --"There will be strictly no exceptions. Demonstrations will be banned and broken up," he said -- Nesirky said "no, no specific comment on individual instances or cases." Video here, from Minute 32:40.

 

One wag wondered if this deference was for all specific countries, or specifically for Permanent Five members of the Security Council.

 

Now we have the worst of both worlds: Ban has said that the freedom of expression, of filmmakers or cartoonists, is not absolute, and has declined specific comment on the banning of even peaceful protest.

 

The irony here is that France's Permanent Representative to the UN Gerard Araud said in Security Council consultations, numerous Council sources told Inner City Press, that he is proud to be able to denigrate religion. And apparently proud to be able to ban even peaceful protest to such acts. Watch this site.

On Embassy Attacks, Wittig Won't Answer on Denigration of Religion, Araud

By Matthew Russell Lee

 

UNITED NATIONS, September 14 -- After two days of protests of an anti-Islamic YouTube video at embassies not only of the US but also the UK and, notably, Germany in Sudan, this month's UN Security Council president Peter Wittig of Germany came to the Council stakeout at 8:30 pm on Friday to read a Council statement. Video here.

  When Wittig finished reading, Inner City Press asked him about what several other Council members had told it earlier in the afternoon: that the September 12 statement on the killing of US diplomats in Libya had initially included a condemnation of the denigration of the religion -- that is, of the murky film -- but that France's Ambassador Gerard Araud blocked it, saying he was proud to have the freedom to denigrate religion.

Wittig answered, you certain don't expect me to speak about internal and confidential deliberations of the Council." Then, brushing off Inner City Press' follow up, he said that Germany's position is reflected in the Council statement. Video here.

  But what several other Security Council members raised to Inner City Press is that France and other European countries -- including Germany -- now cite freedom of speech as a basis for not condemning the YouTube video, but have laws against other forms of speech.

  It gets divisive, and could be distinguished, but the comparison is inevitable. Dodging it may not be the best approach.

  Also on September 14, the US had its Vice President Joe Biden make the call to his Sudanese counterpart, Vice President Taha.

  Since President Barack Obama himself called Egypt's Morsi and then Yemen's Hadi, it seemed clear that Obama wanted to avoid any talk with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide.

  But while the US seemed to excuse Libya for the attack, even as anti-aircraft guns roared in Benghazi, in Sudan as it would be in Iran, protests were blamed on the government, even as it killed protesters. On the other hand, Sudan did bus protesters to the embassies. Watch this site.