Anonymous are again making headlines, as the majority of Polish government related web sites are taken offline in DDoS attacks over the weekend as a protest about an international agreement perceived as being cooked up in years of secret talks between governments and industry.
 
As the dust settles and the mutual back-slapping begins over the withdrawal of the SOPA bill in the US, an older and potentially uglier beast has once again reared its head in Europe. This particular beast is called ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) and you can certainly be forgiven if you haven’t heard of it before, even though it predates both SOPA and PIPA.
 
ACTA is what is known as a “plurilateral agreement” aimed at establishing international (not just US) standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. SOPA would have negligible effects outise of the US, but ACTA is a global agreement. It aims to create its own governing body outside of the existing World Trade Organisation, the World Intellectual Property Organisation and the United Nations. Preliminary talks began as far back as 2006 including Canada, the United States, Japan, the EU and Switzerland. Official negotiations began in 2008 with the addition of Australia, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, South Korea and Singapore. Alongside these national government representatives, an advisory body of large US-based corporations was involved, including the RIAA, the MPAA, International Intellectual Property Alliance and Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America.
 
The negotiations were classified as “Secret” in the US on the grounds that there was a risk of damage to national security. The process by which negotiations took place, without public scrutiny or judicial oversight and the way in which the details of ACTA only emerged as a series of leaks until a draft was eventually published in 201O, after the 8th round of negotiations, has attracted widespread criticism from academics and groups such as the EFF.
 
The major concerns regarding the actual content of the draft centre around a couple of important issues. Perceived infringement on communications privacy for Internet users, as ISPs are obliged to filter content in more depth as a result of their liability for the actions of their subscribers and an increase in liability for websites that link to copyrighted material (sound familiar?) . There has also been concern that the section dealing with border controls would authorise invasive searches of personal laptops or MP3 players in the search for copyright infringing material. It should be noted that EU legislation prohibits travellers from checks if the offending goods are not a part of “large-scale” traffic and US legislation amply demonstrates that unilateral implementation of invasive border searches is entirely to be expected.
 
So why Poland, and why today? Well, the government of the Donald Tusk made a surprise announcement ( two PDFs in Polish) on the 19th January that they would be signing ACTA one week later on the 26th, taking them down the road to ratification. Many Poles feel that this has been done without inclusion or open debate and without a mandate from the people. The strength of feeling is immediately visible in Twitter, with thousands of Poles making tweets of thanks to Anonymous for this initial and ongoing action. Even those not actively participating in the DDoS have contributed to the failures of multiple websites by attempting to access them in their browser to see if the site had been taken offline.
 
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the proposed agreement, it is certainly true to say that democracy is never served in secret, where the interests of only one side of the debate are represented. The Polish Minister for Administration and Digitalisation, Michal Boni has asked Prime Minister Donald Tusk to reconsider the decision before signing and a further meeting has been scheduled for the 24th Jan.
 

One of the largest file sharing services on the Internet was shut down yesterday in US legal action. The site is charged with violation of copyright laws. The indictment (now available on scribd) charges seven individuals with online piracy, four of whom have already been arrested in New Zealand. This 72 page document also details the estimated cost to copyright holders at more than $500 million USD, while themselves allegedly earning $175 million in advertising revenue. The maximum penalty for the offenders could total 50 years of jail time.
 
Search warrants were executed in nine countries and 18 domain names, including mega-upload.com, were seized along with associated servers.
 
This indictment, unsealed right in the middle of impassioned debate over SOPA and PIPA quickly aroused the wrath of the Internet community, particularly Anonymous who have been exhorting their supporters to participate in Distributed Denial of Service attacks against US government web sites including the Dept of Justice, the FBI, the Copy right Office and the RIAA and MPAA, who were successfully taken offline as a result.
 
Anonymous supporters have been using the Low Orbit Ion Cannon (previously detailed here) as well as a new technique of embedded JavaScript. Several web pages have been loaded with JavaScript and the simple act of rendering that page in a web browser will in most cases recruit the browsing computer to the DDoS attack. The attacks have attracted a high level of participation and public sympathy and quickly became a trending topic on Twitter under the #OpMegaupload hashtag.
 
Akamai’s Real-time Web Monitor is currently showing attack traffic online at more than 24% above normal, giving some idea of the scope and geographic spread of public sympathy.
 
Whatever your views on online file sharing, there is no denying that this is an issue urgently in need of a solution. Consumers, artists and corporations seem to have devised workable  methods in the music industry. A return to the generation of income through live performance has reinvigorated the music scene in many countries and cites. Artists have harnessed the power of the Internet for a direct sales model that bypasses the increasingly archaic music industry and online music stores have evolved to facilitate this, with the participation of the corporations, providing music at reasonable cost. It could even be argued that the new iTunes Match service represents the capitulation of the music industry to the new reality of illegal downloads. This model is beginning to be repeated in the printed world too.
 
In the early 1900′s music publishers decried the arrival of the “player piano” as a threat to their way of life, when I was a kid, every record bore the legend “Home taping is killing music“, Hollywood was scared to death at the advent of the VCR…
 
The simple truth is, technology ever advances and with it come new opportunities. Many consumers are taking advantage of those opportunities to access copyrighted material quickly, easily and cheaply (or for free). It is only by facilitating that behaviour backed by a forward-looking business  model that the traditional industry can hope to survive into the future.
 
It’s true that you can’t fight the power, but the power has shifted.
 

 
While paying a visit to the fantastically disturbing Regretsy site today I couldn’t help but be amazed by the sorry tale that was submitted by a regular visitor to the site.
 
A lady by the name of Erica relates in her email how she had sold ”an old French violin”  (in her words a pre-World War II violin) to a buyer in Canada and accepted payment for the item through PayPal. The payment in question was for the not inconsiderable sum of $2500.
 
Unfortunately the buyer was not happy with the authenticity of the violin, raising a dispute over the label (the paper sticker inside the violin identifying the luthier that supposedly crafted the instrument). Labels in the violin world are notoriously unreliable and have been faked for centuries, in fact it was a common “marketing” practice in the Victorian era to attach fake Stradivarius labels to contemporary violins because they were “made in the style of”… The consensus of opinion in the murky world of violin sales seems to be that a label is only the starting point for the valuation of an instrument and that for any truly reliable opinion, a specialist instrument valuer should be consulted.
 
Of course it is the buyer’s prerogative to raise a dispute through the official PayPal process if they feel that they have been deceived into buying counterfeit goods and, not having seen the original advertisement for sale, it would be impossible to form an opinion on that. What really stopped me in my tracks though, were the instructions the buyer received from PayPal in order to qualify for a refund.
 
Rather than have the violin returned to the seller, PayPal reportedly instructed the buyer that he must destroy the violin and provide evidence of its destruction in order to get his $2500 refunded. This all apparently happened without the involvement of any independent verification and resulted in the photograph you see in this post.
 
This process is all detailed in the Dispute Resolution terms and conditions on the PayPal site “If you lose a Significantly Not as Described Claim because the item you sold is counterfeit, you will be required to provide a full refund to the buyer and you will not receive the item back (it may be destroyed).” All decisions are at PayPal’s discretion and are final “based on any criteria PayPal deems appropriate“.
 
One very upset violin seller and a destroyed violin, is only a part of the issue here. PayPal’s dispute resolution process in the format described above leaves itself wide open for abuse. Let’s say I fancy myself a nice designer label watch or handbag (for someone else, you understand) but I can’t afford the real thing, what can I do? Well I could always go and see my friendly street corner counterfeit Rolex or Gucci salesperson and pick one up nice and cheap, then go online and buy the real thing. When it arrives I simply show the counterfeit as proof that I was deceived, provide evidence of its destruction, get my money back and keep my nice shiny new purchase.
 
When the purchase is only a few pounds, euros or dollars this is of relatively minor importance but when we are talking about antiques or designer goods, the sums involved can rapidly escalate and so can the risk.
 
With online purchases, it’s not just caveat emptor but caveat venditor as well. If you are selling expensive items online it is advisable to collect as much evidence as you can of the authenticity and condition of the item in question prior to shipment. Make sure you share this evidence with your buyer and keep a record of all communications. On the buyer side, make sure you fully satisfy yourself of the true nature of the item you are purchasing before parting with any cash. Both parties may wish to consider using a reputable escrow service where the cash is held by a trusted third party until both buyer and seller are satisfied.
 
Obviously the PayPal story as told by Erica is only one side of a two-sided story, there is no mention for example of whether the buyer intially directly asked the seller for a refund, but for PayPal to have chosen to instruct the buyer to destroy the very item that was in dispute seems short-sighted in the extreme and that’s without having to consider the wanton destruction of a beautiful musical instrument.