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The Link Tax, The Censorship Machines And The Balkanisation Of The Web

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Photo Credit: illustration by Guillaume Kurkdjian, “Should we dismantle Google?”

You would think that passing a law to regulate link sharing or to validate intellectual ownership of content is a good thing in designating credible sources and ultimately delivering accurate information to the final user. Well, think again. In an attempt to modernise copyright law, the new Copyright Directive approved on Wednesday by the EU, raises cause for concern under three articles that seem to have control of informational flow at stake. If passed in January of next year, in the current form, the bill might damage the way we use the internet and online freedom of expression in a major way. Let’s brake down these three articles and what they stand for.

1. Article 11: News Aggregators – this article forces news aggregators like say Facebook, Reddid, Medium or Google News to have paid licenses in place for every which pixel and character of copy they share. Now, it all sounds just, but it’s still a double edged sword, as there will be an euro exchange for sharing or quoting content, which limits the access to information for the humble user and increases visibility of any paying outlet. Forcing licensing on news aggregators is nothing new, as similar attempts have been made in 2014 by both Germany and Spain, when Google neutralized the attempt by simply de-listing german and spanish news sites from their index. Article 11 however, might have much more profound implications, if passed. Cutting ties with the informational flow coming from 2 countries is one thing, cutting ties with all of unified europe is another. Having news aggregators diminish quantity over quality by being more selective is an ideal that we’re still not sure how we’re going to achieve as imposing paid licensing might not bring much relief, but the exact opposite.

2. Article 12a: Photos and Videos taken at sport matches – recording videos or taking pictures with your phone while at a sport match and publishing them is labeled as copyright violation, under this article. In other words, organisers will impose heavy barriers to outsiders in what sharing, publishing, presenting, reproducing or recording is concerned. That might lead to an entire fan culture to be filtered out by social platforms or news aggregators that will be forced to comply.

3. Article 13: Copyright Filters – any content flagged as infringement will be monitored by automated detection systems, under the new law. It sure sounds like a good thing, but given the lack of detail in what the implementation might be, this article too might bring much more chaos and a widespread, not necessarily positive impact. Online Censorship being one of them. Google will survive, but mid size companies won’t. Some platforms like github could potentially lose the ability to operate in the EU, any forum would be at risk, becoming giant copyright liabilities.

Failing to redefine these articles, might lead to permanent surveillance, damaging the open and free internet as we know it with great implication on innovation, proving that sometimes the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.

Just as in the case of net neutrality repeal, these articles of the EU directive are seen as enemies of innovation. Advocates of net neutrality argue in the favor of keeping an unobstructed online field as a vital part of innovation. Their concern is very valid and should be a cause worth fighting for all of us.

Net neutrality broadly means that all content available on the internet should be equally accessible, it’s a philosophy that puts big ideas and big money on equal grounds- preventing providers like Comcast and Verizon to block some data while prioritizing others. In other words big companies shouldn’t be blocking users from accessing services like Netflix in an effort to sell their own cable package or for the purpose of making users buy a streaming video service bundle sold by your ISP.

Otherwise, if broadband providers start picking favorites, new technology might never see the light of day. To understand that assertion, imagine you had your ISP blocking or limiting access to video streaming when services like Youtube came to shape, 18 years ago. Had that been the case, Youtube might not even exist today or would only be accessible upon paying extra fees to your ISP. A very unpleasant prospect, we agree.

In the case of net neutrality repeal, having a VPN in place can help you overturn its effects.

Under the new FCC regulation, an ISP has the liberty of charging you more if you watched Netflix instead of Hulu, creating “fast lanes” and unfair advantages to preferred partners. Don’t think your ISP would do that if given the chance? Well, it’s already happened as stated before, since 2004, coming up to AT&T’s Facetime ban and again in 2014 and 2017 when Verizon slowed down Netflix traffic.

While California’s S.B. 822 is becoming the poster child for states looking to keep net neutrality in place by voting its own rules, not all states have the luxury to do so.

Getting back to the Copyright Directive, whether this new law will empower content creators or cause more harm then good is still unclear. One think is certain, if the directive passes in its current form, things will get much more chaotic, before they start to order and actually make sense. If voted in the spring of next year, member states will have two years to implement it. Expect some large platforms to stop service in Europe- as we saw happening post GDPR implementation. Some might decide to just geo-block services for a while. When or if that happens, you know what you have to do. Turning to a VPN service might prove very helpful.

All in all there is no doubt that the online environment is becoming increasingly politicized and the concept of a open but safe internet is in the midst of powerful forces of antagonistic interests fighting each other. A balance between these forces is a desiderate for a healthy environment that we’re not sure how or when we’re going to achieve.

In the meantime, people are turning to VPNs to preserve access and to reclaim online freedom and privacy and we strongly advice that you should do the same.

No longer an exotic tool, VPNs are now entering the mainstream and given the context it’s easy to understand why.

Simply put, when you’re using a VPN, all your data travels through a tunnel encrypted from end to end. In other words, your ISP will not be able to block access or make sense of your data, since you’ll have all your online data happen elsewhere, not going through your ISP servers and encrypted all the while.

But it’s not just your ISP that keeps track of your browsing data, it’s your cell phone provider too, most apps, operating systems, and other services do the same.

Smartphones with preinstalled tracking software, secretly bundled with tracking files are sold everyday, while some companies try to leverage the very problem they created by charging extra for privacy.

Having a VPN in place is the smart approach to getting around all this. Think at a VPN as the middleman between you and the internet, where your ISP can only see a bunch of encrypted traffic. And since your VPN knows as much as your ISP would, it’s very important to choose a reliable one with a zero log policy and a strong encryption.

Services like MyIP.io will offer you a self-managed VPN network platform, delivering fast, secure and reliable VPN service , The platform caters to a wide demographic through three channeled directions:Personal,Dedicated and Business, so it makes for a wonderful choice for corporate or personal use at the same time.

Engineered as a global platform,MyIP.io is a VPN service provider committed to developing applications and services that preserve an open and secure Internet experience while respecting user privacy.

Global Privacy in 2018 – 8 Months In Retrospect

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Starting with Facebook scandal in April and following with net neutrality repeal in May, 2018 is ringing alarm bells in online security and rightly so with a double sworded twist, both on the technology and law enforcement standpoints. Digital privacy concerns culminated however this summer, when both Russia and China decided to ban VPN services, thus preventing government censorship to be undermined by virtual private networks any longer or by other anonymous browsing tools.

While China is leading the censorship through technology control, detecting and blocking server infrastructure used by VPN providers, Russia went on a more bureaucratic path, by creating more draconic rules against VPNs, enforced by law.

Photo Credit: i.pinimg.com

Yet, neither one of these two examples comes as a surprise. China’s two decade long “Great Firewall” or Kremlin’s legal web spinned gradually over a 6 year period, starting roughly in 2012, lagging behind China’s much more complex technical apparatus were not very subtle in the first place, predicting the exact dystopian reality of today in digital privacy.

It was early this August that Apple succumbed to China’s requirement to remove some of the VPNs from the chinese App Store front. And the case is far from being singular. Amazon and The New York Times too recognized that doing business in China means to play by chinese rules and ultimately caved to the country’s censorship apparatus. Maybe a small price to pay in order to tap in the massive chinese market.

Beyond the gated community of the Chinese Great Firewall, the “Chinese wall” abbreviation is today a business term, spreading its meaning to international affairs, imposing heavy entry barriers to outsiders.

Just a year ago, Uber the ride-hailing giant, capitulated to its Chinese competitor Didi, announcing the selling of its Chinese operations to Didi Chuxing, the homegrown favorite.

Even though circumvention tools are little used by ordinary Chinese, for the vast majority of westerners based in China, a VPN download is a common habit, just as drinking “still water” or keeping your air conditioning at minimum temperature.

Chinese online censorship on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be backing down, especially after a series of large, anti-pollution, anti-corruption protests, and ethnic riots, many of which were organized or publicized using instant messaging services, chat rooms, and text messages.

But the digital censorship has proven to be very lucrative for local technology companies like Tencent, the giant that owns WeChat, a 700 million users app that combines e-commerce and real-world services in ways that has the western companies in awe.

It’s no news that the Chinese market is home to a copycat cultural habit, but at the same time China and not Silicon Valley is cutting edge innovation if we were to quote New York Times. “While still lagging in some important areas, China managed to protrude Baidu instead of Google, Weibo for Twitter, WeChat for Facebook or Alibaba instead of Amazon. Letting users hail a taxi or order a pizza without switching to another app., the rich, resourceful Chinese digital world is proving itself to be worthy of causing a real great split between China and the rest of the world.” (China, Not Silicon Valley, Is Cutting Edge in Mobile Tech – watch the short video here by Jonah M. Kessel and Paul Mozur for The New York Times ).

The technological control in China is now being enforced by new laws against circumventing tools so expect no change for the better in what online freedom is concerned. At play we have a huge market that needs to be protected and an authoritarian regime not to be threaten by exterior influence. China’s local technology companies are flourishing protected behind the “internet gates that keep over 700 million users loyal to local brands.

On the other hand, Russia leads the digital censorship by oppressive laws, while both Russia and China occasionally resort to arrests and intimidation.

So given the not so bright perspective, it’s easy to recognise that 2018 was a pretty tough year from a digital privacy standpoint and it’s only the end of August.

In spite of the orwellian scenario, it’s not yet clear how the censorship ordeal will play out and there are still a lot of VPN services that still work in China and Russia.

There are many ways of circumventing the totalitarian Chinese surveillance system, such as proxy servers or VPNs.

Any company selling VPN services in China must comply with regulations, hence register with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Plus they’re constantly targeted by the local authorities and are often slow and unstable.

As monitoring and surveillance is not confined to the Great Firewall, but built-in social networks, chat services and VoIP, the best solution falls in the court of companies outside China.

MyIP.io is a self-managed VPN network platform, delivering fast, secure and reliable VPN service ,with servers located in France, Romania and Canada, hence is not subjected to Ministry of Industry and Information Technology or DMCA compliance.

The platform was designed with the professional focus in mind and caters to a wide demographic through three channeled directions:Personal,Dedicated and Business, so it makes for a wonderful choice for corporate or personal use at the same time. Engineered as a global platform,MyIP.io is a VPN service provider committed to developing applications and services that preserve an open and secure Internet experience while respecting user privacy.

Setting yourself up with a VPN connection, when in China or Russia is still the first thing to consider, whether you’re looking to stay away from the control apparatus or simply connect to Netflix streaming. The connection, in China however, goes at a global low speed pace, so you’ll need to have your expectations straight when entering the arena a VPN app. is able to unlock for you.

Your School Might Be Tracking Your Online Activity, Here’s How To Stop It From Doing So

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Remember how net neutrality made waves just last month? Well, going forward the online security issue seems to only deepen as news about data collection, monitoring and surveillance practice go far beyond just access.

Since it’s only weeks before the start of the new school year, we figured it’s only relevant we address a very interesting report, conducted in schools in England and Whales by privacy advocates Big Brother Watch. The said report found more than a thousand of them to be using surveillance software to monitor students in class and while on campuses.

The very first paragraph of the report reads: “Unless you are a teacher or have a child in school, it is likely you are not familiar with a modern classroom. Your memories of school may be of chalk boards and scribbling down lessons in a workbook. Answering a question meant putting your hand up, whilst talking to a friend, or enemy, was done by scrawling on scraps of paper. Information came from books and encyclopedias not the internet, in fact the only time you may have used a computer was in a specific information technology lesson and even then there weren’t enough computers for every student to have a go. That vision of school is already out of date and will soon be obsolete. The analogue classroom of old has been replaced with smartboards, internet connected devices and communication via instant message. And rightly so. Learning in the 21st century must revolve around technology in order to teach children the skills required for a digital life in a digital society. The challenges of the modern classroom have changed. “

A pretty accurate description of how the internet changed the classroom environment wouldn’t you agree?

Whether this monitoring software (amounting an extra £2.5 million in school expenses as per the whole specimen included in the study) is used in aid of keeping students focused on educational goals or whether we are talking about a real privacy intrusion and possibly pecuniary driven data collection, is the real underlying matter in question here. Looking at the key findings of the report the results don’t offer much comfort in setting the bottom line privacy issue straight. Before raising concerns, let’s go through a few of these numbers as revealed in the study:

70% of responding secondary schools in England and Wales were found to use a Classroom Management Software package. Out of 1000 schools, only 149 (15%) provided Use Policies, of those 149 schools: 26 (17%) gave detailed information about the type of Classroom Management Software and how it was used, while 123 (83%) failed to give any information beyond the fact that students may be monitored when using computers.

This is of course not just a case for UK, Australia also, has a few universities tracking students to the point of telling the exact room a certain student is in, at a certain time. There is no telling as to how these data catalogues influence the grade systems if at all, but the very fact that these institutions are storing this data could be revelatory of them analyzing patterns and behaviors for a so far undisclosed purpose.

Getting around this panopticon system your educational institution might have in place too, is actually a pretty simple task at hand. The most practical way to avoid being monitored by your school or university is simply to get a VPN service.

SET YOURSELF WITH A VPN CONNECTION AND ROCK ON:

No longer an exotic tool, VPNs are now entering the mainstream and given the context it’s easy to understand why.

Simply put, when you’re using a VPN, all your data travels through a tunnel encrypted from end to end. In other words, your school or university will not be able to block access or make sense of your data, since you’ll have all your online data happen elsewhere, not going through your ISP servers and encrypted all the while.

But it’s not just your school that might be keeping track of your browsing data, your cell phone provider too, most apps, operating systems, and other services do the same.

So, having a VPN in place is the smart approach to getting around all this. Think at a VPN as the middleman between you and the internet, where your ISP (that can be your school, while on campus) can only see a bunch of encrypted traffic. And since your VPN knows as much as your ISP would, it’s very important to choose a reliable one with a zero log policy and a strong encryption.

Services like MyIP.io will offer you a self-managed VPN network platform, delivering fast, secure and reliable VPN service , The platform caters to a wide demographic through three channeled directions:Personal,Dedicated andBusiness, so it makes for a wonderful choice for corporate or personal use at the same time.