A U.S.-drafted chapter on Internet use would require ISPs to police user-generated content, to cut off Internet access for copyright violators, and to remove content that is accused of copyright violation without any proof of actual violation. The chapter also completely prohibits DRM workarounds, even for archiving or retrieving one's own work. Read on for details and implications.

As with other sections of the treaty, portions of this element have been leaked online. As it stands, the leaks suggest Internet users around the world are headed for a new regime of IP enforcement - a culture of invasive searches, minimal privacy, guilt until innocence is proven and measures that would kill our normative behaviors of file-sharing, free software, media downloading, creative remixing and even certain civil liberties.

Allegedly modeled on sections of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, the treaty would require ISPs to police user activity for possible copyright violation, and ISPs would be held responsible for any infringing content being uploaded or downloaded. This all spells a huge boon to the established entertainment industry and a huge burden for ISPs.

"In order for ISPs to qualify for a safe harbor," writes Michael Geist, who has published the substance of the leaked material, "they would be required establish policies to deter unauthorized storage and transmission of IP infringing content. Provisions... include policies to terminate subscribers in appropriate circumstances." That means a three-strikes rule would apply to anyone who was accused of violating copyright in any way; ISPs would be required to terminate the user's account after three complaints from the content owner. For something as culturally accepted as downloading music, a user's entire household could be cut off from the Internet and access to information, communication, personal account management, et cetera.

Geist continues, "Notice-and-takedown, which is not currently the law in Canada nor a requirement under WIPO, would also be an ACTA requirement." In other words, whether or not a piece of content or media violates copyright would be arbitrary; the content would be removed by the ISP as soon as a takedown notice was issued. The takedown would be enforced regardless of considerations such as fair use. This policy, which mirrors the DMCA, would be enforced for all nations participating in the treaty.

Finally, the treaty includes a ban on circumventing DRM and other copyright-protecting measures in hardware and software, as well as a ban on the manufacture, import and distribution of circumvention tools. Again, this ban is irrespective of circumstance or content ownership and is inflexible.

Our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, arbiters of freer use of copyrighted material, have this to say:

U.S. negotiators are seeking policies that will harm the U.S. technology industry and citizens across the globe. Three Strikes/ Graduated Response is the top priority of the entertainment industry... The ACTA text appears to leave the door open for major changes to the existing national Internet intermediary liability regimes that have been the global status quo since the mid 1990s, and which have underpinned both tremendous Internet innovation, and citizens' online freedom of expression and the rich world of user generated content that we take for granted today.

European citizens should also be concerned and indignant. As reported, the ACTA Internet provisions would also appear to be inconsistent with the EU eCommerce Directive and existing national law...

Are international treaties governing Internet content and intellectual property even necessary? Insofar as they fly in the face of normative cultural practices and contradict or tighten existing national laws, we find these suggested measures inflexible and unrealistic. But whether they become reality and shape the landscape of the Internet-to-come remains to be seen.

Traditionally the champions of Creative Commons and other, more open methods of IP protection and creative sharing of content online, EFF is now calling out a bevy of big-name media corporations to make examples of them for takedown abuse. According to the EFF blog, "Some of the web's most interesting content has been yanked from popular websites with bogus copyright claims or other spurious legal threats." Read on to see who made the list and why.

"But that hasn't stopped thin-skinned corporations and others from abusing the legal system to get these new works removed from the Internet. We wanted to document this censorship for all to see."

Some of the entities that have made EFF's roundup are as follows:

• NPR, for attempting to stifle a video criticizing same-sex marriage
• DeBeers, for its humorless response to an online parody
• NBC, for issuing a takedown for a satirical Obama video that went viral
• And a personal favorite, Ralph Lauren, who shot out a few takedowns after our good friends at Photoshop Disasters pointed out that, even in already thin models, a woman's head is not likely to be wider than her pelvis

Other honorees include Warner Music Group, CBS News, Universal Music Publishing Group, and the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.

Is the EFF conducting a witchhunt here, dear readers? Are some of these copyright claims warranted? Or do you, in fact, have an egregious takedown of your own to report? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Update: According to Google, "the removal appears to be an internal error and not part of a DMCA request."

According to Chilling Effects, a clearinghouse for DMCA takedown notices, the complaint was apparently sent by an adult entertainment company, Gwen Media's Destined Enterprises, which has filed similar complaints with Google before. According to TorrentFreak, the complaint was sent by RemoveYourContent, a company that specializes in sending out DMCA complaints for the adult entertainment industry.

For the time being, the effect of this takedown notice is that PirateBay.com, a scam site that really shouldn't appear in Google's index, now sits at the top of the search results.

It's important to note, though, that this is far from the first time that Google has deleted search results after receiving takedown notices. To the best of our knowledge, however, this is the first time a well-known site like the Pirate Bay has been affected by this.

If you haven't been following the developments in this case closely, here is a quick recap: Firas Alkhateeb, a 20-year-old student in Chicago, created an image that showed President Obama wearing the makeup of the Joker from the last Batman movie. To do so, he used an image of Obama that appeared on the cover of Time magazine on October 23, 2006. According to the LA Times, he uploaded this picture to Flickr on January 18, 2009. By August, someone added the word "socialism" underneath the picture, and it was widely circulated among political bloggers and also started to appear on posters at political rallies.

So far, so good. Even if you don't agree with the politics behind this picture, this is what the online mashup culture is all about. By the middle of August, however, Flickr received a DMCA take-down notice, claiming that the image infringed on somebody's copyright. Complying with the law, Flickr deleted the image from Alkhateeb's account. The problem, however, is that Flickr never shared who actually initiated the take-down notice.

Fake Take-Down Notices on Flickr: They Work

It is starting to become clear now that the take-down notice that Flickr and Alkhateeb received was completely bogus. According to Thomas Hawk, it didn't even feature the name of anyone who owned the copyright to any part of the image. PDN has verified that neither Time magazine, nor DC Comics, nor the photographer who took the Time magazine cover image filed this claim. These are the parties that could potentially claim that their copyright was violated by this image, even though, because this is a parody, their legal claims would be on shaky ground. Instead, the name on the document, according to Hawk, is "bogus."

To make matters worse, Flickr user 3e actually verified that Flickr really doesn't check the names on these notices. 3e just submitted a claim to take down one of his own pictures with a "once-off email address, using the name 'Joe Blow' and giving no identifying information other than an obviously fake address ("Anytown, USA")." Flickr happily obliged and 3e's photo was gone within hours.

If you don't like a picture on Flickr for any reason, you can just have it deleted by sending a DMCA take-down notice. We can only hope that Flickr will institute a better verification process in the near future.

As of now, Flickr doesn't even have the capability to restore an image after it has been deleted. YouTube, which probably has to deal with far more DMCA take-down notices every day than Flickr, at least offers users a recourse to have videos restored if the copyright claim can't be verified.

Nevertheless, in the case of this wedding video, Sony (copyright owners of Forever) chose to capitalize on the clip's success rather than blocking the file. They added a simple pop-up overlay that offers users a chance to purchase the song from iTunes or Amazon. According to YouTube, in the last week, the year-old song has risen to #4 on the iTunes charts and #3 on Amazon.

To Google's glee, Sony's success in working with users is likely to inspire other copyright owners to rethink their past actions with DMCA take-down notices. And this would be a welcome change for many. Take downs have shown a history of hurting user morale, reducing valuable community content and decreasing channels of monetization for content hosts. In the case of the wedding video, while it's obvious that Sony made money, YouTube has likely earned profit from AdWords as well as referral revenue from Amazon and iTunes.

Because Sony left the wedding video up, the community continues to receive free hosting and feedback, the copyright owners profit from their licensed goods, YouTube earns new revenue, and the remix community continues to proliferate. Since last week, some of the remixes and re-creations include the Divorce Entrance Dance, a WIS-TV anchor version and the couple's own appearance on the Today Show.

Perhaps most successful is University of Ottawa professor, Michael Geist's, outspoken stance against the introduction of the Canadian DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). A little over a year ago, Geist launched his Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook Group in the hopes of educating the public about a bill he saw as a "sell out to American pressure". Geist believed that Bill C-60 would have effectively duplicated American copyright legislation and created an unfair imbalance between copyright holders and general consumers. Thousands of Canadians agreed and the Fair Copyright Facebook group gained widespread popularity.

On the day the DMCA was to be voted upon, the Facebook group had more than 25,000 members and Federal Industry Minister Jim Prentice dissolved the legislation in favor of further analysis. While there was no admittance from the Minister that online resistance was the reason, Industry opposition Charlie Angus exclaimed, "They tabled the bill this morning, now 3 hours later he tells me they've got cold feet? Did they just discover Facebook this morning?"

Whether Canadians like it or not, Facebook has changed the landscape of Canadian politics. Geist's Fair Copyright for Canada group currently has more than 89,000 members, and he was named the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer of 2008. Meanwhile, the Conservative government has promised to reintroduce the DMCA, but no date has been set in legislature. For more on the Geist and the Facebook group, check out the coverage on CBC's The Hour.

In return, Craigslist has now filed its own suit in federal court in South Carolina, "seeking declaratory relief and a restraining order with respect to criminal charges he [McMaster] has repeatedly threatened against Craigslist and its executives."

In his ultimatum, McMaster asks Craigslist to "remove the portions of the Internet site dedicated to South Carolina and its municipal regions which contain categories for and functions allowing for the solicitation of prostitution and the dissemination and posting of graphic pornographic material" within ten (10) days." Given that anybody can post anything on Craigslist (except for the new 'Adult Services' section, which is now closely monitored), this is far too broad a statement and Buckmaster rightly argues that Craigslist would just have to close shop in South Carolina.

The South Carolina "adult services" section of Craigslist currently only features a few ads, and they are about as tame as the ads for chatlines for singles that run on late-night TV all over the country. At this point, most ads just feature a (non-pornographic) photo and a phone number.

A number of legal experts have argued that the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) protects Craigslist from criminal prosecution, as, according to the DMCA, an "interactive computer service" can not be held responsible for content posted on the service's site.

In order to make an iPod work with an alternative software program - like gtkpod, Winamp, and Songbird, for example - developers need to understand a file called iTunesDB. To prevent people from writing to this file, Apple protects it with a checksum hash which has to be reverse-engineered. Usually that process only takes a couple of days.

With the latest iTunes update, Apple has once again changed the hash, meaning it needs to be reverse-engineered again. The developers doing so collaborate together and share their thoughts on iPodhash, an open-source project hosted on Bluwiki, a free web site that lets users create wiki pages.

Now Apple has asked for that site to come down, a request that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says is out of line. Earlier this month, a lawyer from Apple's legal firm O'Melveny & Myers sent out a takedown notice to the site stating the content was illegal under the terms of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). According to the cease-and-desist email, the site is "disseminating information designed to circumvent Apple's FairPlay digital rights management system." It continued, "FairPlay is considered anti-circumvention technology under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA explicitly prohibits the dissemination of information that can be used to circumvent such technology."

The EFF has jumped on this case, saying that Apple "doesn't have a DMCA leg to stand on." According to EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann, this move is effectively bending the law in order to stifle free speech. "Apple is essentially saying here that people can't even talk about the mechanisms that Apple uses to lock in its music to the iTunes software," he said.

The EFF web site goes into more details as to why the EFF believes Apple to be in the wrong, listing the numerous reasons why there's no DMCA violation on the site.

Where Does This Leave The Linux Community?

Since the Bluwiki site has complied with the takedown notice, the question is where does this leave the Linux community now? The main reason for the iPodhash project's existence is due to the fact that Apple does not provide a version of iTunes that runs on Linux. The project is an important community effort that helps Linux users create software programs that work with their iPods and iPhones.

Bluwiki's founder, Sam Odio, had said he was unsure if putting the site back online would be possible. Says Odio of his compliance with the takedown notice, "I regret having to do this. I may be able to put the site back online, but quite honestly it's unlikely because I can't afford a legal battle with Apple." Luckily for him, the EFF is now involved, so he will not have to worry with the legal fees.

Apple may only be protecting their very profitable iTunes business, but in this case, they're suggesting that the DMCA covers people merely talking about technical protection measures. If that's so, then as EFF says, "they've got a serious First Amendment problem."

You can follow this case's progress on the EFF's web site, Odio's blog, and on the iPodhash project's homepage.

Even though Joost does not rely on its P2P architecture anymore, the video quality is still high, especially in full-screen mode, but it does not rival that of the 'HD' offering of ABC or Vimeo.

More Social

Joost has also added a wealth of social features to its site. You can now easily share videos with your friends on Joost and join one of the newly established Joost groups. Also, everything you watch is stored in your 'JoostFeed,' which you can choose to make public. If you really do not want your friends to know that you have been watching Brittany Spears videos all night again, you can also turn on a 'Stealth Mode.'

Because of its reliance on a plugin, however, Joost does not offer the ability to embed videos yet. We assume that this feature will be available once Joost has moved over to using Flash.

Too Little, Too Late?

Overall, we think it was about time for Joost to move to the browser. However, a lot of what Joost set out to do in 2006 has already been done on the web. Its biggest competitor is probably Hulu, which has content deals with almost every large TV network and is slowly adding more HD content. Joost will have a hard time competing, unless it can sign up a similarly large number of quality content producers.

What Does Infovell Do?

The engine scours through open-access repositories of information like PubMed Central and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Claims, but it also allows access to scholarly journals such as those from Oxford University Press, SAGE, Taylor & Francis, Annual Reviews, Mary Ann Liebert Publications, and more. The culmination of these billions of pages currently unindexed by other engines, gives you access to content in the areas of Life Sciences, Medicines, Patents, Industry News, and other reference content from expert sources. In addition to just functioning as a search engine, Infovell can also deliver breaking news alerts which are automatically sent to your email, PDA, or any other device you choose.

It May Look Boring, But It's Not

In the demo (see video below), the team from Infovell showed how their engine could be used for researching a medical condition - something that many people try to do today using Google, but with little success. Generally, web searches only return results to sources of general information like the Mayo Clinic results, WebMD, or online support groups. To be able to research something by reading through the actual journal articles that the doctors have access to would be a huge step towards democratizing the world's knowledge.

Why Can't Information Be Free?

Unfortunately, that knowledge is not being set free with Infovell. Instead, the service will exist behind a pay wall, which once again puts the power of information into the hands of those that can afford its access. Although expected, it's disappointing to see that this service will be yet another source of critical information which most people won't have the time or financial resources to use it. Case in point, if someone needs to research a medicinal condition in that much detail, it's a sure bet that they have doctors' bills that are a bigger priority than a subscription fee to a search engine.

Why isn't anyone building a Google for the Deep Web? If Infovell is offering a collection of scholarly information and putting a price tag on its access, why can't someone else build a similar collection and wrap ads around the service to monetize it? We love the idea of this type of service, but would would rather see a bigger effort to open up the unindexed web and deliver it to the public for free.

Infovell will be available for a 30-day free trial, starting September 22nd.

That's a real shame because there's already some very interesting looking content there. This is a solvable problem, though.

Half for fun and half for work, we created an RSS feed for the new Craigslist blog that you can subscribe to below. That blog should be interesting, but if it ends up half as interesting as the Best of Craigslist section of the site - then look out Technorati 100.

The New Craigslist Blog

Full feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/craigslistblog2

The body of the posts won't be delivered in this feed, as we struggled to scrape a feed at all using Feed43. When I say we, in this case, I mean my dashingly handsome and brilliant co-blogger Josh Catone.

Unfortunately, you can't take for granted that anything you build on top of Craigslist is going to survive, even if it solves a problem over there. The beautiful multi-city search tool Crgslst got shut down days after we wrote about it here. Luckily the wonderful Image preview extension for Firefox still works - check that one out.

The Best of Craigslist

The feed URL below will deliver the items on the Best of Craigslist page - warning lots of naughty words - very funny stuff. Even the Best of Craigslist's own native RSS feed is broken, so we scraped that too. Anybody who said you couldn't build a huge company online without giving RSS its due was obviously wrong.

Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/BestofCraigslist2

As was pointed out by one of our fantastic commenters, it turns out there is a full feed available for Best of Craigslist at feed://www.craigslist.org/about/best/all/index.rss. Though for some reason the page itself doesn't have the URL right.

We hope you enjoy these feeds. Isn't RSS a wonderful thing? We sure think so here at RWW.

First, MySpace is taking the unorthodox move of giving applications some access to their PR department. MySpace announced on Monday that it is looking for a few good apps with whom to put out joint press releases. This is undoubtedly a good move for MySpace PR because it allows them to create a more continuous buzz about the platform. But like the platform itself, sharing the stage with app developers is a surprising shift from old policies for the News Corporation-owned social network.

This is, after all, the same News Corp. whose President and COO Peter Chernin said in 2006, by way of introducing plans for MySpace to compete with many of the companies that had helped it grow, "If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flicker, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace."

It's the same Fox Interactive Media (the arm of News Corp. that controls MySpace) whose Chief Revenue Officer Michael Barrett said last year, "We probably should have stopped YouTube. YouTube wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for MySpace. We’ve created companies on our back."

And it's the same MySpace that famously blocked widgets (such as YouTube and Photobucket -- the latter of whom it eventually bought) that competed with products of its own.

But a lot has changed in the past year. Not only has MySpace embraced the idea of an application ecosystem and launched a developer platform, but they also announced plans in January to create a startup incubator. Is it too little, too late, though? Will MySpace's platform be as successful as Facebook's has been?

Apps in the News Feed ... Er, Friend Subscriptions

Yesterday, MySpace also announced that it would begin pushing notifications of app installations to its Friend Subscriptions -- their equivalent of the Facebook News Feed.

Interestingly, while MySpace is just rolling out this feature, Facebook has recently begun to impose restrictions on how applications interact with the News Feed in an effort to combat information overload and growing noise. It will be interesting to see if MySpace repeats the same mistakes Facebook has made, or learns from them and implements tighter restrictions on it Friend Subscriptions from the start.