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 realitybasedcommunity.net - writings on establishment clause, free exercise, free speech, free press, copyright, trademark, right of publicity, media law, defamation, new media law. about scott pilutik. The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.'' - Ron Suskind, Without a Doubt, NY Times, October 17, 2004
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Archives for August 2008 August 25, 2008 Hillsong misuses copyright law to create distance between itself and religious fraudster Guglielmucci
The following contains every element necessary for a good story: religious fraud, pornography, and copyright abuse. As Wikipedia puts it, "Michael Guglielmucci is a former pastor and songwriter with some of Australia's biggest youth churches...," specifically Hillsong Church, which is affiliated with Assemblies of God Pentacostal denomination, and for which Guglielmucci wrote and recorded numerous songs, which Hillsong published. One of Guglielmucci's songs (which were apparently quite popular within the Christian youth demographic) drew direct inspiration from Guglielmucci's revelation that he had an aggressive form of cancer. The song, "Healer," was a huge hit: Healer became an anthem of faith for believers, many of whom are suffering illnesses and were praying for Mr Guglielmucci. Except Guglielmucci didn't have cancer, which has led to a police investigation (Guglielmucci has been soliciting and receiving donations), and some degree of embarrassment on Hillsong's part. Somewhat hilariously, Guglielmucci's father, when interviewed, chose to blame his son's need to perpetrate religious musical fraud on his addiction to internet pornography, a connection I don't quite see, no matter how much I squint. And here's where the story gets interesting. Even though videos of the song have been littered all over Youtube for awhile now, Hillsong has issued DMCA takedown requests on all the videos. Copies of the video, some which had received up to 300,000 views, now read: This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Hillsong Publishing A good friend of mine, Deana Holmes, edited the video down (which shows Guglielmucci on stage, introducing Healer with an oxygen tube inserted in his nostrils) and put it up on Youtube, which is the copy embedded below. While I don't think the video needed Deana's insightful commentary in order to bulletproof it as fair use, her commentary does supply some welcome context. I'll cheerfully host a full copy of the video (which can be seen here, at least for the moment) because publication of the entire song, at this point, falls under fair use--the video's newsworthiness as evidence of Guglielmucci's fraud trumps whatever copyright interest Hillsong has in controlling the publication of existing copies, so long as Hillsong's apparent interest is in burying its own shame in the deceit. See DMCA sec. 512(f), and Deibold v. OPG, 337 F. Supp. 2d 1195 (N.D. Cal. 2004) . Realize that I'm not accusing Hillsong of participating in Guglielmucci's fraud, only that they are misusing copyright law to distance itself from the entire unholy mess. posted by scott pilutik at August 25, 2008 02:22 PM
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reddit August 15, 2008 Google terminates NYC Scientology critic site's AdSense account
Google terminated EpicAnon.com's AdSense account yesterday, informing the site by e-mail: While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account.Google's highly successful AdSense program is a cost-effective way to place non-obtrusive advertising on your website and generate revenue. Website owners do not control which ads appear on the site--AdSense matches ads based on a site's particular content. Thus, because EpicAnon.com is largely concerned with Scientology, ads for Scientology--Scientology is an AdSense customer--appear on EpicAnon.com, which unsurprisingly drives the Church of Scientology nuts. Although the notice doesn't say, Scientology certainly complained to Google that its ads were appearing on a critic site—but Scientology was not motivated by the awful specter of members of Anonymous clicking through the ads to their site as they were motivated to harm the site owner economically (which it did—AdSense accounted for 80% of the site's revenues). AdSense makes a great deal of economic sense for both advertisers and site operators, who would find the costs prohibitive were they try to forge optimal one-to-one relationships on their own. Google, which is well-placed to direct advertisers' messages to the right audiences, is in the middle, taking advertisers' dollars and paying site owners a small percentage. For small, non-commercial site owners, like EpicAnon, that meager percentage is all that keeps a site afloat. But since Google is only taking dollars from one party (the advertiser) in an AdSense transaction, it can be picky about how it chooses site owners--it doesn't need any site in particular because there is simply no shortage of websites. It's understandable that many advertisers wouldn't want their ads appearing on certain types of sites (or even specific sites), but where should Google be drawing the line where it terminates a site owner from the program? Google, despite merely serving as the middleman has a long list of content prohibitions. From Google's AdSense site (under Site Content): Sites displaying Google ads may not include:
Legally, there's no reason Google can't proscribe overbroad terms—everyone is free to use or not use Google's service. But because of Google's ubiquity and market dominance, the choices for both advertisers and site owners are slim, to the point where the public trust has to account for more. Remember back in the day when "Don't Be Evil" was Google's one overriding principle? Yeah, those days are drifting into the oblivion for me too. By so narrowly defining what constitutes acceptable content on behalf of its advertisers, and then only enforcing that policy selectively, opaquely, and at the hidden behest of advertisers who use Google as a useful proxy in a larger game of lawfare (a game of which they're well aware, having appeased Scientology whining as to its search engine rankings in the past), Google is Being Evil. Much of that evil is clear from the above-mentioned prohibitions—"advocacy against any … group or organization" accounts for a huge chunk of web, and would, if the natural meaning of its language were observed, exclude 90% of political blogs from participating as AdSense publishers. But it's relatively easy to find political blogs where 9 of every 10 posts advocate against the opposing party. AdSense members? Sure. Advocacy for anything regularly necessitates advocating against opposition to that thing, which usually appears via some public interest group. People who are for feeding starving African children are naturally against the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Members of Anonymous are for free speech, religious transparency, and families, and are thus naturally against the Church of Scientology. Google selectively ghettoizes sites opposed to Scientology, punting them into the same bin as porn, white power, and viagra spam sites. This would matter less if Google was not so ubiquitous and have such a significant say in the manner of Internet content. Google is practically a public utility by this point and perhaps the laws that govern broadcast, gas, and electric companies should also govern Google to some degree. Libertarians would be horrified if such a direct line were drawn between a company in such a new industry, even a company as dominant as Google, and the public trust. But Google is not just some passive reporter--it has become such a large part of the whole Internet fabric that its policies now directly affect content creation. By its AdSense program, it is dictating commercial orthodoxy, declaring sites such as EpicAnon as "unsafe marketplaces." If whistleblower-style sites can't participate as AdSense members (and there are no comparable substitute products available from any competitor), there will be fewer of these types of important sites. Google is not only dictating orthodoxy, it's mandating complacency. As the mainstream media further demonstrates its unworthiness of First Amendment protections by becoming subsumed by the government it is supposed to serve as a check against, smaller online media need greater consideration under the law. These outlets need more than press badges though; they need to be given equal opportunities to thrive. posted by scott pilutik at August 15, 2008 02:30 PM
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