Internet News

A Paris appeals court has rejected requests to block the most popular adult tube sites in the country.

Following months of statements and threats pressuring tube sites to implement undefined age verification schemes, French media censor ARCOM went to court in March and April to demand that French ISPs block Pornhub, xHamster, xVideos, Cliphunter and Xnxx.

Meanwhile 2 morality campaign groups are also pushing for ISP blocking via the courts, and their blocking requests add YouPorn, RedTube and Tukif to the list.

ARCOM had  sent formal notices to tube site operators demanding they find a more robust solution than the simple declaration of age. The porn sites did not comply, seemingly because ARCOM had not defined what age verification methods would be acceptable.

French reports now reveal that the Council of State, an appeals court, issued a ruling rejecting the ARCOM blocking requests. The reasons for the rejection are not wholly clear so far but the most plausible is that recourse to blocking should be the last resort rather than the first call. It seems that ARCOM should be doing more work to define what age verification measures the porn websites should be taking.

The Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA), the censor for premium rate services (PRS) in the UK is to hand its responsibilities over to telecoms censor Ofcom by late 2023.

Subject to approval from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) , the PSA will then cease to operate as an independent body. The PSA says that it anticipates Ofcom will assume responsibility for regulation in the second half of 2023, with PSA staff transferring to Ofcom. Ofcom will look to retain the key components of Code 15 to continue regulation in the consumer interest. PSA rules and Code 15 will remain in place until the transfer.

The PSA Chairman, David Edmonds said:

The work of the PSA in recent years has reduced risks to consumer to historically low levels. We introduced in April this year a new set of regulations which further protect consumers. And the industry -- both phone companies and service providers -- is increasingly conscious of its own responsibility to ensure dubious services are not operated. Complaints to the PSA are down by over 90%. We are also conscious of market trends and as a result the Board decided that future regulation of an industry increasingly dominated by larger players would be better served by an organisation with the capacity and breadth of Ofcom rather than a free-standing body. We already work closely with Ofcom who designate the PSA to deliver the day-to-day regulation of the market, by approving our Code of Practice. We look forward to working with them on this transition.

This proposed transfer of responsibilities has already been approved by the Ofcom board.

The US state of Florida responded to social media's silencing of Donald Trump by enacting a new law to ban social media from censoring users for political reasons. The law was challenged in the courts and it has now been judged to be mostly unconstitutional.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Florida's social media regulation law is unconstitutional.

The Appeals Court ruled against most of the provisions in Florida's social media regulation law. However, it said some of the provisions, including one that requires platforms to allow banned individuals to access their data for at least 60 days, were constitutional.

The ruling said that the law violated social media companies' First Amendment rights:

We conclude that social media platforms' content-moderation activities -- permitting, removing, prioritizing, and deprioritizing users and posts -- constitute 'speech' within the meaning of the First Amendment.

Most notably, the court rejected the argument that social media companies should be defined as common carriers, saying:

Neither law nor logic recognizes government authority to strip an entity of its First Amendment rights merely by labeling it a common carrier.

Earlier this month, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a similar law in Texas to be enforced. The Texas law prohibits social media companies from censoring content or banning users based on political viewpoints. Tech companies have appealed the ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and have submitted the ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to support their case.

An upcoming EU law has been leaked that requires big tech companies to scan the private messages of all their users regardless of any end to end encryption technolgy being used. Of course the EU cites child porn and grooming as the nominal justification but when messages have been scanned I am sure that governments will demand that the tech companies hand over the messages for a much wider range of reasons than that claimed.

Under the plans, tech companies -- ranging from web hosting services to messaging platforms - can be ordered to detect both new and previously discovered child sexual abuse material (CSAM) as well as potential instances of grooming. The detection could take place in chat messages, files uploaded to online services, or on websites that host abusive material. The plans echo an effort by Apple last year to scan photos on people's iPhones for abusive content before it was uploaded to iCloud. Apple paused its efforts after a widespread backlash.

If passed, the European legislation would require tech companies to conduct risk assessments for their services to assess the levels of CSAM on their platforms and their existing prevention measures. If necessary, regulators or courts may then issue detection orders that say tech companies must start installing and operating technologies to detect CSAM. The draft legislation doesn't specify what technologies must be installed or how they will operate -- these will be vetted by the new EU Centre -- but says they should be used even when end-to-end encryption is in place.

Read the full details in article from wired.com

365 Days: This Day is a 2022 Poland romance by Barbara Bialowas, Tomasz Mandes
Starring Kamil Lemieszewski, Oliwia Babuska and Nikola Bogucka

Laura and Massimo are back and stronger than ever. But Massimo's family ties and a mysterious man bidding for Laura's heart complicate the lovers' lives.

Morality in Media (which now likes to call itself the National Center on Sexual Exploitation) has written a glowing write up of Netflix's latest sexy offering. The campaigners write:

Netflix is in the business of hosting and producing shows that overtly glorify sexual violence. A prime example of this is the film 365 Days and its recently released sequel, 365 Days: This Day . 365 Days was widely criticized for glamorizing sexual violence. But rather than removing the film Netflix produced a sequel, 365 Days: This Day, which was released on the platform on April 27, 2022, and rapidly became the 5th most watched movie in the US on Netflix that week.

The plotline of 365 Days is as follows: A handsome, powerful man name Massimo kidnaps a woman named Laura whom he desires. Massimo tells Laura that he will hold her captive for 365 days, and if she doesn't fall in love with him by the end of that timeframe, she will be free to leave. Although Massimo promises Laura that he will not touch her without her consent, he repeatedly gropes her during her captivity, even in the very act of making that promise. He also handcuffs her to the bed and forces her to watch while he performs sexual acts with another woman. When Laura tries to escape, Massimo threatens to hurt her family. Nonetheless, Laura does eventually fall in love with Massimo and the two go on to have a steamy, glamorous relationship. This progression of events romanticizes and implicitly condones all of Massimo's abuse, painting it as merely the rising action in a glorious love story.

Following the release of 365 Days in 2020, a petition was launched by influencer and survivor Mikayla Zazon, calling on Netflix to remove this incredibly harmful movie from its platform. The petition garnered almost 100,000 signatures. The singer-songwriter Duffy also urged Netflix to remove the film through an open letter in which she bravely sharing her experience of surviving being sex-trafficked and raped. Duffy writes:

365 Days: This Day picks up with Laura and Massimo getting happily married, again whitewashing all the abuse that led to their relationship. Massimo continues to be depicted in romanticized terms. For example, in the ending scene he swoops in to rescue Laura from other captors who are holding her at gunpoint -- a supposedly grand romantic gesture which conveniently ignores that Massimo himself was the first person to kidnap Laura and hold her captive against her will.

Unlike the first movie, 365 Days: This Day is a Netflix original, produced by Netflix itself. This means that Netflix not only failed to condemn and remove 365 Days from its platform, but it actively decided to take even further responsibility for its abhorrent messages by producing its follow-ups.

As part of the Government’s package of sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on Wednesday 27 April 2022, the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs made new regulations imposing restrictions on the provision of certain internet services to, or for the benefit of, designated persons. Currently the Secretary of State has named TV-Novosti (RT) and Rossiya Segodnya (Sputnik) as designated persons for these purposes.

The Regulations relate to the provision of internet access services, social media services and application stores. They were laid before Parliament and came into force on Friday 29 April 2022.

The Regulations require different actions to be taken depending on the nature of the services that are offered:

• Providers of internet access services must take reasonable steps to prevent users of the service in the United Kingdom from accessing, by means of that service, an internet service provided by TV-Novosti or Rossiya Segodnya.

• Providers of social media services must take reasonable steps to prevent content that is generated directly on the service, or uploaded to or shared on the service, by TV-Novosti or Rossiya Segodnya being encountered by a user of the service in the United Kingdom.

• Providers of application stores through which an application for an internet service may be downloaded or otherwise accessed must take reasonable steps to prevent users of the application store in the United Kingdom from downloading or otherwise accessing, by means of that service, an internet service provided by TV-Novosti or Rossiya Segodnya.

For these purposes, internet services provided by TV-Novosti include rt.com; internet services provided by Rossiya Segodnya include sputniknews.com.

The Regulations appoint Ofcom as the enforcement authority responsible for ensuring compliance, including granting us information gathering powers, and additional powers to impose monetary penalties of up to £1,000,000 in relevant circumstances. Were it necessary for Ofcom to take enforcement action, we would follow the general processes and procedures set out in our regulatory enforcement guidelines.

India's cybersecurity censor, the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In), will require  cloud and VPN providers to register their users. Custodial wallets, exchange, virtual asset providers, cloud providers and even VPN providers will have to keep records of their customers (KYC) and records of financial transactions for five years. Service providers will maintain logs of their systems for 180 days.

This would defeat the purpose of using a VPN and creates honeypots of data that could be misused for surveillance or stolen.

CERT-In are claiming that the new requirements will improve the overall cybersecurity posture and ensure a safe and trusted internet in India.

Update: VPN Providers Threaten to Quit India

6th May 2022. See article from wired.com

VPN companies are squaring up for a fight with the Indian government over new rules designed to change how they operate in the country. On April 28, officials announced that virtual private network companies will be required to collect swathes of customer data204and maintain it for five years or more204under a new national directive. VPN providers have two months to accede to the rules and start collecting data.

...

There's a worry other, more liberal governments will follow the Indian-Chinese model, too. Attacks on end-to-end encryption are commonplace in the UK, while the US joined India, the UK, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand in signing an international statement asking for backdoor access that would subvert encryption standards.

Read the full article from wired.com

Update: India's New VPN Policy Explained

10th May 2022. See article from beebom.com

A good write of how Indian government policies will effect the use of VPNs in India

Elon Musk has been giving off mixed signals about the direction of travel for his newly acquired Twitter. On one hand he seems to speak about more freedom of speech. Perhaps hinting that the pre-censorship cancel culture movement will have no truck on Twitter. On the other hand he has been speaking about authenticating all humans, possibly meaning ID verification for all users. Surely a move that will increase censorship as the authorities will then have more power to identify and punish those whose views differ from those mandated by the state.

Anyway this suggestion of mass ID verification has piqued the interest of pro-censorship MPs in the UK parliament. Julian Knight, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee, has written to Musk wishing to speak further about mass ID verification. Knight wrote:

My committee has noted your proposed acquisition of Twitter and we are interested in the developments you propose. In particular, your intention to roll out verification for all users echoes our calls on the U.K. government as part of proposed legislation, which we hope will restore the U.K. public's trust in digital platforms.