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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘free press’
23.08.2022
This is too good. Now, Hearst Communications, Inc. was sensible enough to realize that what I raised was real, and a senior VP put me on to a colleague dealing with Hearst Magazines International. Nothing yet, but I wrote a release, sent it to a few colleagues, and published it on Lucire describing what had happened. As it’s going in to Lucire, unlike Google, I’m really careful about libel.
Just now, Red Points Solution SL has been by and issued another notice. They can’t deal with the negative publicity so they play the only card they know how: issuing another DMCA notice to Google and leaving Hearst SL wide open to a penalty of perjury.
I mean, I’ve seen stupid (like that time a former disgruntled staffer wrote an anonymous note to people who knew me but hand-addressed the envelope), but this is like walking into a trap (that I didn’t even realize I had set!).
Now, what if word got out even more widely that Red Points Solution SL is shutting down free speech? Time to send the release more widely?
If only I had more time—but this might be tomorrow’s free-time project.
Tags: 2022, copyright, copyright law, DMCA, free press, free speech, Hearst, JY&A Media, law, Lucire, media, press freedom, Spain, technology
Posted in internet, media, publishing, technology | No Comments »
20.08.2022
Yesterday morning, we received a second notice with two more URLs—one with wholly our own content—from Hearst SL and its contractor, Red Points Solution SL.
I’ve done a bit more digging and it’s usually fraudsters who engage in this behaviour. You can read more about them in Techdirt, Mashable and Search Engine Land.
With their millions of dollars, I guess these two Spanish companies are now in the same game of fraud.
And Google believes them, even though Mashable wrote about these techniques in 2018.
If it’s that easy to manipulate Google, then it’s finished as a credible search engine.
Meanwhile, Red Points Solution and Hearst SL open themselves up to charges of perjury. Not too smart there.
Three firms with millions, even milliards, of dollars who don’t like the independents, and one firm now falsely claiming ownership of work from us, French Sole, BFA.com, and L’Oréal. With L’Oréal, why would you involve your own advertiser? Does Hearst SL want to slit its own wrists as a company?
Tags: 2022, copyright, copyright law, fraud, free press, Google, Hearst, JY&A Media, law, licensing, Lucire, L’Oréal, media, press freedom, publishing, Spain
Posted in internet, media, New Zealand, publishing, technology, USA | No Comments »
08.07.2020
Public domain/Pxhere
What a pleasure it was to be back on The Panel on Radio New Zealand National today, my first appearance in a decade. That last time was about the Wellywood sign and how I had involved the Hollywood Sign Trust. I’ve done a couple of interviews since then on RNZ (thank you to my interviewers Lynda Chanwai-Earle and Finlay Macdonald, and producer Mark Cubey), but it has been 10 years and a few months since I was a phone-in guest on The Panel, which I listen to very frequently.
This time, it was about Hong Kong, and the new national security legislation that was passed last week. You can listen here, or click below for the embedded audio. While we begin with the latest development of social media and other companies refusing to hand over personal data to the Hong Kong government (or, rather, they are ‘pausing’ till they get a better look at the legislation), we move pretty quickly to the other aspects of the law (the juicy stuff and its extraterritorial aims) and what it means for Hong Kong. Massive thanks to Wallace Chapman who thought of me for the segment.
Tags: 2020, China, democracy, free press, freedom of speech, Hong Kong, law, media, news, press freedom, radio, Radio New Zealand, Wallace Chapman
Posted in business, China, culture, Hong Kong, media, New Zealand | 1 Comment »
17.03.2014
At the weekend, 40,000 to 50,000 took to the streets of Moskva—Moscow—to protest their government’s actions in the Ukraine, at the Peace and Freedom March. I understand that media called the country’s actions ‘the shame of Russia’.
A friend provided me with photos of the protest that he and his friends took, which I uploaded to my personal Facebook profile this morning.
Within minutes, they vanished from my wall. Facebook has replaced them with a message to say my page cannot be loaded properly, and to try again. Seven hours later, the problem persists.
They are still on the mobile edition but I’ve noticed that, for a public post, very few people have seen them.
What is curious is whether Facebook has some mechanism to remove content. I remember some years ago, video content vanished, too, with Facebook making false accusations that I had uploaded copyrighted material—despite my having express authorization. I had to fight Facebook, which had adopted a guilty-till-proved-innocent approach, to keep up content I was legally entitled to upload and share. Facebook presented me, for months, with a massive notice on my home page each time I logged in, where I had to fill in a counter-notification daily to their false accusations.
I had understood that generally copyright owners had to complain first under US law, unless, of course, your name is Kim Dotcom and US lobbyists want to make an example of you.
So we know that Facebook does have mechanisms to take things off without any complaint being filed. And we also know there are algorithms limiting sharing.
Given the speed with which this vanished today, I doubt anyone would have complained—and I’m hardly a target for those interested in Russian politics.
I have since uploaded the album to my Facebook fan page—where it has not been deleted, but stats for it do not show up. Thanks to Facebook’s actions, I’ve uploaded the five images to my Tumblr as well—and here they are again, for your interest.
We can credit Facebook for ensuring that these images were more widely shared.
Tags: 2014, copyright, copyright law, Facebook, free press, free speech, Kim Dotcom, law, Moskva, peace, politics, press freedoms, presumption of innocence, Russia, Ukraine, USA
Posted in internet, media, politics, publishing, USA | 3 Comments »
06.02.2014
The spirit of Gene Hunt is alive and well in the Greater Manchester Police, in the form of Sgt David Kehoe.
Arresting someone over drink driving when he has neither drunk nor driven reminds me of The Professionals episode, ‘In the Public Interest’, about a corrupt police force in an unnamed English city outside London.
The only thing is: that was fiction. This was fact.
So, IGas Energy plc, you may frack away. The British Government and the Met have your back.
Dr Steven Peers was the cameraman and citizen journalist who was arrested. CPS did not have sufficient evidence to proceed with a prosecution. I wonder why.
He is now planning to bring a civil claim against the GMP for ‘wrongful arrest, false imprisonment and assault,’ according to the Manchester Evening News, which appears to be the only mainstream media outlet I could find that covered this incident.
Another report claimed that the GMP never received a complaint from Dr Peers, though how are we supposed to believe any statement from this force? The video has gone viral, and global—and if Operation Weeting and the inquiry into police standards were insufficient to give the Met a bad name, then this surely will.
What next? Legislation to make protests against oil companies illegal?
No, that would be daft. It would totally be against the ideas of free speech, human rights and international law. No democracy would be that stupid.
Tags: 2014, civil liberties, corporate abuse, corporations, corruption, energy exploration, England, environment, free press, free speech, human rights, international law, journalism, law, mainstream media, Manchester, media, New Zealand, police, press freedoms, UK, Web 2·0, YouTube
Posted in business, globalization, media, New Zealand, politics, UK | No Comments »
09.02.2010
This map (via pedroelrey on Tumblr) is food for thought, about international press freedoms:
Those of us who enjoy a free press need to use it and not take it for granted. We might not always like what’s being said, but we should embrace the fact that we can say it at all.
I was surprised to see that the US did not have a fully free press, according to this map from Reporters sans Frontières, which classes it with Chile, Argentina, France, South Africa and Japan.
In fact, there are few of us that seem to be in the white—especially when you factor in the small populations of Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia.
The fact there are still countries in the black—the colour used here to represent a grave situation for press freedom—is also disturbing. Some communist nations, parts of the Middle East and Africa and several former Soviet states have very little press freedom.
Anyone want to come up with some theories on why the US, France and Japan—developed countries I would have thought would come up in the white on such a map—are in second place when it comes to press freedoms?
Tags: democracy, free press, freedom, media, press freedoms, Reporters sans Frontières
Posted in culture, France, media, politics | 1 Comment »
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