Intellect or Insanity

The kidnapped soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser came home in a coffin. not that it wasn’t expected or something, but the real question is when did the state of Israel stopped telling the truth. I mean, Yossi Gurvitz raised a few questions in his post showing that there were preliminary signs that the government knew that we were dealing with bodies. One may conclude, at least fromThis morning’s Ynet article that at 06:43 they knew that we are trading bodies, otherwise the logic that “In 09:00 Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser will arrive to Rosh Hanikra, shortly afterwards the identification process will take place and may take several hours” doesn’t really apply here. Yesterday, when our beloved president, Shimon Peres signed Samir Kuntar’s release, we were told that this is probational: “His signature will come into effect after positive identification of the Israeli soldiers, Regev and Goldwasser”, Keshet’s site told us. NRG-Maariv reported yesterday at 20:30 that the Rabinite began the identification process.

So when did you lose faith in your government?

[Originally in Hebrew, Sorry for all Hebrew links]

[Also in Hebrew]

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“You acknowledge and agree that Facebook may at any time in its sole discretion, without liability, with or without cause and with or without notice: (a) terminate this Agreement; (b) terminate or suspend your access to Facebook Platform, Facebook Properties and/or the Facebook Site or any portion or feature of any of them; and/or (c) remove, block, delete or disable access to your Facebook Platform Applications and/or or any Facebook Platform Application Content, including without limitation if we determine, in our sole discretion, that your Facebook Platform Application or any Facebook Platform Application Content is unsuitable for Facebook Platform, Facebook Site or Facebook Users (…)

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While the blogoshpere and the technological sections in the newspapers are running around the Web 2.0 buzz (and some of the 3.0 buzz as well), We keep forgetting where the real bubble for this technology lies. When Om Malik explained yesterday at TWS2008 that advertisers are the ones impeding the net from developing and dot com startups that develop Facebook applications without any business models get millions of dollars in funding, there’s only one question: when will people realise what Facebook’s real business model?

2.
Google shut down a few blogs which opposed Barack Obama, possibly because Obama supporters tagged them as spam. It was ll executed by automatic systems where the censorship was made by private entities, but it doesn’t actually matter, as Blogspot’s terms of service state that “Google may, in its sole discretion, at any time and for any reason, terminate the Service, terminate this Agreement, or suspend or terminate your account”.

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Constitutional Law is probably dead and irrelevant; what was the private sector until recently  was settled in under “Private Law” or “Civil Law”, but today everything changed: Companies that develop applications for social networks or webservices are subjected to the new constitutional law, the Terms of Service.: The problem begins when stable business models that companies build upon and get their funding due to them are based on social networks’ grace. This is not a stable agreement, but a unilateral agreement that grants the social network (or the search engine) an exclusive right to terminate the agreement and prevent the company from operating. (And it’s important to understand that when I relate to facebook in this post I also mean any other social network or webservice like Twitter that allows 3rd party applications)
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Now, some might say that Facebook’s income and  value are derived from the amount of applications it has. Cynicists may say something completely different: Facebook’s value is derived from its ability to monetize the applications that those will be able to run on the platform.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, photo by KK+ under cc-by-nc-sa license.

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In a year or two Facebook’s shareholders will come to their senses and start asking money from the leading hundred applications, as they are allowed to do. Their policy would be similar to this: An application with less than a million users may run freely, but once you obtained a million users, you’ll pay us one US$ per user. That’s fair, isn’t it? And then what? will these companies shut down and go home? not really.

6.
It’s crucial to understand that when you develop a Facebook application or any other social network based application, you’re writing your source code on ice; it’s more than reasonable to assume that Facebook won’t charge you anything and will never shut you down. The problem starts when you want to establish a business model on something that’s more than “more than reasonable” (like investing your pension funds). That’s why, like you wouldn’t deploy a real product without contracting your deployment contractor, you really should consider doing the same with Facebook.

“So? You’ve won” I was told today when the minister of telecommunications, Ariel Atias, notified that he will submit a “Softer” version of the Israeli Censorship act. The problem began when I explained that this is another spin after a “Soft” version was submitted a year ago, and no one thought it was soft (If you can read Hebrew, I suggest you read the interview that Doron Fishler had with me at Nana while I was driving back from Jerusalem).

It’s crucial to understand that in spite of the minister’s claims that no filtering will be made by default, the bill does determine that if you do not answer your ISP’s question whether you wish to filter content or not, you will not be able to access the internet (with one exemption, which is sort of a small victory, regarding existing customers, they will not be filtered).

The question of biometric identification remained open. The minister is still authorised to determine the means who will identify a person as an adult. As long as a person will have to identify itself against its ISP, there is a hatch to allow access to Israel’s establishment of a biometric database (which is currently in establishment) and allow the ISPs to access it by defining them as “Public”.

Moreover, the whole thing around User Generated Content (which Atias avoided) did not get the right attention.Most likely, Atias acknowledges that ISP based filtering (meaning, all of Israel’s traffic will be filtered) has some negative results and that the “Public committee” he established will have to set criterias to filter user generated content, including Israel’s most popular websites.

And maybe the worst problem was that the ISPs did not arrive to today’s discussion while the bill may incur heavy expenses on them. Maybe they know that this fight has to move on to the supreme court. The Parliament members just don’t listen. They just make it hard (and still use the “Protect The Children” dialect while they know that no one will be protected under this bill)

Maybe we were wrong when we intervened in the original bill and started a riot. Maybe the right move was to allow the bill to pass with all the biometric identification, with the central apparatus, with shaming lists, that way the supreme court would have seen it as obvious and we wouldn’t have to explain to him how bad this bill is. Now, with the new version of the bill and all the spins around it, it’s a hard job to explain the unconstitutionality of this bill, but it remains unconstitutional.

Hon. Judge Hanan Ephrati in C 1152/08 State v. Haim Nissim raised a few legal issues which weren’t even mentioned in the 3 page decision, not even in the brief opinion [Hebrew] by Adv. Aviv Eylon which was published on Ynet earlier this week.

Haim Nissim was just one more of the victims suspects of Dov Gilhar’s remake of “To Catch a Predator”, who were arrested, humiliated and afterwards charged by humorous crimes. The “Indecent Act in Public” and “Attempt to sexually harass” were the charges brought against Nissim, who, alledgedly, chatted with Sivanush while masturbating in front of a webcam. The Israeli police thought that they can charge Nissim with at least attempted rape or indecent acts in a minor, however, these were replaced with the minor crime of “Indecent act in Public”.

Nissim asked the court to strike the “indecent act in public” charge, as the act was not done in a public place, but in a chat room (and if this reminds you reminds you the court decision regarding selling Hametz in passover, C 4726/07 State v. Terminal 21, then it’s not a coincedence).

In C 1454/92 State v. Joseph Virtgeim the defendant was acquitted from the same charges as not all of the crime’s elements were me. Virtgeim masturbated in from of his apartment’s window while his neighbor watched from the next building. While the court asserted that this was not made in public, it stated:

For this matter, it is certain that the defendant executed the indecent act in the confinement of his apartment, and his private apartment is certainly not a public place. In this case the prosecution hasn’t proven otherwise. If, however, you’d state that the second alternative of “public” would come into force, then it is required that a “person positioned in a public place would see the act”. In this case, it is quite obvious that the plaintiff standing in her apartment - is not in a public place, anyways the prosecution hasn’t proven otherwise. Even if you’d say that there is no need that the plaintiff would actually be situated in a public place and it is sufficient that a person in a public place may see the act, the prosecution has still not proven that this is actually the case.

In plain English: As long as the spectator is in his own home, and not in a public place, then the indecent act is not in public.This perquisite came following Hon. Judge Bechor’s ruling in CA 383/80 Simon Palker v. State where the three elements of Indecent acts in Public were asserted (See also: C (TA) 9163/98 State v. Nemirovsky): (1) The act is committed in a public place OR (2) in a public assembly or rally OR (3) in a place where a person in a public place may see it.

It’s quite obvious that a person in a public place could have browsed Nissim’s chat room (assuming it’s not a private chat, which is not stated in the decision) or from any Internet Cafe, but in order to establish all the elements there are a few more requirements. If we’ll return to Virtgeim, where the defendant’s window was visible from outside, the prosecution still needed to prove that it actually was.

In a sidenote, we need to consider the meaning of a “public place” on the net when our public spaces are being taken from us every day. I mean, if a couple would have had sex in the middle of the desert, which is government property and a public place, no one would have charged them for this crime; even in the public sphere there are discrete places like forests, caves, lakes and isoteric places where a person could expect privacy.

And, Like the real world, there are places on the net which are not “Public”, the fact that a chat room is open to all doesn’t actually mean that they’ll get there and doesn’t mean that the public would watch the chat room. Relative Intimacy is actually the case here, from the  numerous chat rooms and the relative anonymity.

[Also in Hebrew]

In theory, there’s no difference between prohibiting an Avatar to have sexual experiences with a person and paying your word processor minimum wage; Think about it as you read this post:

Today, around the time this post will be published, I’ll be attending the parliamentary subcommittee for prevention of women trafficking to discuss Zehava Galon’s proposal to ban internet brothels. The bill itself is an amendment to the Israeli Penal Code that will state that “He who holds or administers a place, including a vehicle, a boat and an internet website, for prostitution, shall be incarcerated for five years”.

The question what is a website hasn’t popped up and didn’t come to discussion in the bill, and therefore I compiled a brief about the bill [heb], the same paper was a response to Dr. Michael Birnhack’s brief which fears that the bill shall impose liability on hosting services, ISPs and content providers. However, the Electronic Commerce Bill, which will be discussed this Wednesday (expect news and maybe live posts in Hebrew) may immune them and make his worries redundant.

My primal fear in the brief is from banning virtual worlds in Israel just because those virtual worlds allow certain players to initiate sex for money; another problem may be that the legislator in Israel has yet to speak about Virtual Sex Services (also, also, also) which will be provided by instruments and Artificial Intelligence (which allegedly may solve the Prostitution Problem via technology). And that’s what I said before:

“A great example is the satire Ynet present about watching pornography: Pornography doesn’t really exist, but it a virtual game where the player portrays himself masturbating. He isn’t even producing sexual enjoyment from it, but “plays”, like any other game, he takes upon himself a role. There’s no difference between a game where you’re a pedophile and a game where you’re a car thief or any other hated profession.

Our lives are being virtualised every day, even today: We take upon ourselves active roles instead of being passive. We participate in games instead of passively watching TV just because we wish for interest in our lives. When we’re passive we try to select the lesser bad, to chose these with the most interesting lives to live in. We simulate sex when we wish to be with someone that we can’t afford to get, but we can’t yet live with certain imagionations, can we? (22.01.2007)”

It’s quite obvious that website which will let other watch you, or someone else, in an amateur manner won’t be considered virtual prostitution as Adi Alyah wrote, but did the legislator intend to prevent the abuse of software or prevent advertising for prositution? A wide prohibition on “Internet Whorehouses” may do great service to children who need protection from the horros on the net [in Hebrew this was actually funny, as the link is to the latest internet demonisation campaign, which is quite ignorant in anything relating to the net] and maybe it would cause those who demonise the web to stop the horror. Prohibiting advertisements of prostitution services may also stop tormenting the Israeli net, as those websites who advertise prostitutes will taken out of the web, that’s why my brief was about clause 205, and not 204, where my offer was to prohibit advertising prostitution services on the net.

Indeed, it is still legal to be a prostitute in Israel and as long as it remains legal you can’t restrict [prostitute's] freedom of employment; however; banning advertising may be a wide restriction. However, in the same manner that lawyer are prohibited to solicit or advertise, steps have to be taken to mark the way for prostitute to advertise [on the net]. Advertisements have to be modest, coherent and reasonable in a way that manner that won’t hurt the reader’s feelings and won’t mislead any reader (in the same way as tobacco and alcohol ads are regulated). [Here's the part where I admit to being wrong but I believe I can still make a difference]

Restrictions should be on the hours that the ads will be displayed, but by imposing punishments on those who advertise outside the regulated standards. This may promise that the ads will only be displayed to adults or by only allowing ads on “Professional Guides” (so that the police would have the power to regulate that those women are not being raped and are getting humane conditions)
Img CC-BY-SA-NC MarkHaertl

I assume that most readers won’t agree with my opinion on Prostitution: I believe that consumers should not be punished, I also believe that a woman’s right on her body incorporates her right to provide sexual services, I also believe that it’s a legitimate service. The problem isn’t the prostitutes, it’s what goes on all around.

In comes technology, and makes the impossible possible, “Prostituteless prostitution” is now just like “meatless meat” which is under development. Prostitutionless prostitution may solve all the problems in women trafficking: any person may chose within a virtual world his perfect partner and fulfill his deviation or perversion in a perfect way: Anal sex, violent sex, sex with minors, with aliens, animals and maybe even with himself (twice or several times in a gang-bang).

[Also in Hebrew]

The deputy mayor of Or-Yehuda, Adv. Uzi Aharon, organised and arranged the Or-Yehuda burning of the New Testament in protest of missionaries distributing it. The deputy mayor is a member of a political ultraorthodox party, Shas, which proposes the anti-democratic Israeli Internet Censorship Bill (more); the bill offers us a new perspective on the legitimate discourse, as it attempts to force Shas’ opinions on the general public.

Meaning, the same political party which does not believe the expressing a different religious opinion is a legitimate act is the one trying to determine for us what content should we consume and operate the black-lists of internet websites.

This is not a political spin, nor is it something populistic act, it is a brief example for what is considered  illegitimate for our own minister of Telecommunication, Ariel Atias, is attempting, like the Hamas in Gaza, to fence our legitimate discourse.

The same political group behind the Or-Yehuda book burning is the group who wishes to censor the internet.

It is crucial to remember that the Or-Yehuda book burning is just the begining and that the minister of telecommunication is alreading attempting to block the expression of religious groups who have different points of view and had set up rotten deals like allowing billboards on the highways as long as they do not publish obsecne materials. The acts of a party who wishes to narrow the legitimate expression in Israel is a matter for our history books.

(also in Hebrew)

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It’s burning, brothers! It’s burning!
Oh, our poor village, brothers, burns!
Evil winds, full of anger,
Rage and ravage, smash and shatter;
Stronger now that wild flames grow –
All around now burns!” (Mordechai Gebirtig, Our Town is Burning)

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The deputy mayor of Or-Yehuda, Uzi Aharon decided to burn copies of the New Testament in protest of missionary activities in his town; residents in his municipality are burning books in a flame of disrespect to the missionaries, who he says, are out to convert the residents of Or-Yehuda to Christianity. Of course, as a member of the Ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, he opposes all missionary activity, as long as it is not “returning to religion”, which is basically Jews becoming ultra-orthodox. In brief, Aharon collected copies of the new testament and arranged a public burning of them; while he did not deny his involvement, he later claimed that “it was done by local religious people” to News-Israel.net (here)).

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Is there anything wrong with missionary activity? Preaching to change one’s religion without any financial compensation should be in the legitimate scope of discourse; of course, when you decided that a specific god is the right god, there is no reason that the followers of another god would preach and fight his rule. Again, once legitimate missionary activity will be forbidden in Israel for non-Jewish religions, the law shall not be neutral and therefore illegitimate.
Img CC-BY-NC-ND Mark Bridge
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Anyways, is there a difference between converting one’s religion type (Judaism to Christianity) and converting one’s habits of religious practice (meaning going to synagogue or praying daily? While Israel’s penal code states that it is a crime to offer payment in order for one to convert his religion, but the real question is what will go on with those who will “strengthen” their belief. It’s not just the “type” of religion, but its “Quantity” as well.

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If a free market of religions exists in Israel, then the competition should have been more than legitimate. However, it should note that the attorney general should order an investigation for “hurting religious beliefs” against a whole culture, the Christian one.

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Where were you when they burned books in Or-Yehuda, where were you when they burned the religious missionaries?

Israeli Bloggers Raviv Shechter, Oded Kramer and Shlomo Man (known as Jaggermeister) recieved a lawsuit for defamation by ‘One‘, an Israeli sport portal which it’s manager is said to have relations to criminals and covers, amongst other things, gossip around Soccer and other sports. The Website, which is owned partialy by Israel’s most popular newspaper, Yedioth Ahronot, is suing  the three for 2,000,000 ILS (around 600,000 US$), claiming that the three damaged One’s reputation by calling it “The Party and Gossip Site” and claiming that the website is run like a train-station, when employees are replaced frequently and the website avoids basic journalist ethics.

The story began around March, when Tapuz, the website which hosted the blog then, received a letter requesting to reveal the identiy of JaggerMeister, an anonymous blogger who wrote the blog for the last year after Shechter and Kramer opened it and managed the blog in the first few months. Tapuz blocked and edited some of the content (which actually may inflict liability on it) pursuant to a letter from Shay Elias, One’s attorney. Following the removal, Jaggermeister decided to stop writing the blog and transferred it to Themis, which dedided to move the blog to Wordpress.com since it has stricter protection for user generated content.

Last week, One decided to file a lawsuit against the three, when it is not certain how it got to Jaggermeister’s identity and whether their aassumption that Shlomo Man is Jaggermeister is indeed true. Another group of bloggers critical on One closed their blog in fear of legal actions, and Themis, Jaggermeister’s replacement, claims to write only from internet cafes and with a spoofed MAC address.

The major concern here is from One’s parent company’s conduct: Yedioth, a major corporation in Israel had merged with One earlier last year and now has some control over it. Yedioth has its own integrity to keep as a newspaper, and suing critics, even critics who use a harsh language, is bad for business. Yedioth will have to do something about One before it is too late.

This Tuesday I’ll be going to the Parliament to discuss Israel Hasson’s “Talkback” bill*; this draft is a quick evolution of his last anti-anonymity bill which was rejected. If passed, the bill will state that website operators with over than 50,000 pageviews per day are directly liable for slander and privacy breaches performed on their website by users, anonymous or not. This bill has material legal issues involving privacy, private property and freedom of expression, however this is not the time to discuss them. It is, however, quite important to know what might have happened had the bill passed into law.

* Israel calls user submitted comments Talkbacks for some reason, without it being used anywhere else in the world and without using “Tguvut”, the Hebrew equivalent

Had Hason’s proposal been in power, Tapuz, directly in competition with Yedioth, would have been liable to all that was written in the blog and would have closed it down immediately, making all criticism unavailable as it may violate some 3rd party’s good  name. Also, Tapuz would have been required to operate a team of lawyers inspecting all user generated content. Moreover, Bloggers wouldn’t have been allowed to remain anonymous and therefore no one would have heard this criticism about One, which was casted by the shadow of anonymity which Jaggermeister thought could protect him from unethical legal actions against him to silence him.

Where anonymous posting is removed, anonymous voting will be next, then will come voting at all.

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The New York Post clears some of the fog in the Ehud Olmert bribe case, which is currently under a gag order in Israel; however, we, as Israelies, are not allowed to read about it in our newspaers. However, a few brave bloggers decided to link to the article; Velvet Underground links to the article by linking to the NY Post’s “Interesting Article (according to her); Mosif links and explains that this is according to foreign sources and “The One” links to the article and states that it is her public interest. Those three popular blogs link to a post in the NY Post about Israel’s Prime Minister’s Investigation and the potential developments there.

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However, it may turn out that in a few months from now, not only that these bloggers may be blocked, but also the NY Post and any website linking to it in order to keep the Gag Order in tact. Theoretically, when Israel’s Censorship Bill comes into law, we may be all coerced into reading only websites the government decides we may read. Once an apparatus which enables the government to block websites will be installed, the uses may not be only to protect kids. This is the “Slippery Slope”.

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Unlike what Moshe Lador, the Attorney General, stated that the public interest is to leave the Gag Order in tact. However, he is wrong. The public interest will be hurt only if the publication of such evidence will cause false testimonies and collection of evidence; in this case, publishing the information in the NY Post did not do that.

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Will blocking the NY Post make these links disappear? The Information already leaked out, so it is in the public domain; no gag order, no warrant and no trial can make it go away; Leave it be.

Does this article on Slashdot mark an end to my worries? According to a new bill submitted by Chris Smith, U.S Based corporations would be subjected to criminal liability should they censor Internet content and limit freedom of speech (arstechnica article). The new bill requires U.S Corporations to adhere to a new kind of policy, both in regards to Privacy Policies and to Content-Filtering and requires search engines to submit to the U.S Government their “black lists” per country (which, as other critics may say, limits the Search Engines from free business).

However, during the last few months, I’ve been heading the blogger coalition against censorship, trying to block Amnon Cohen’s prop 892 (also, also). However, this bill may not mean an end to my worries, the proposed bill is to censor adult content: gambling, violence and nudity, these three are absent from the U.S definition of censorship; as their interest in Internet Freedom is limited not to free speech, but to democratic speech.
Img CC-BY-SA-NC MateOptMd

Whilst according to sec 203 of the bill, search engines cannot limit keywords (or have to explain why such keywords were blocked), section 204 only requests hosting services (defined also as: a company which “makes such data available via the Internet.”, i.e Cisco and such) and to provide URLs which were blocked from availability; the only requirement is that Israel shall be deemed as an Internet Restricting Country according to the bill, which requires the U.S President to declare it as such.

Moreover, once the U.S President decides to declare Israel as a Internet Restricting Country, U.S Corporations may not assist our service providers implementing the “Big Brother” act (see more); This means that most of our problems, as nationals seeking internet freedom, are dependent on such a statement by the Honorable Prez. However, since there is quite a wide discretion for his implementation of the act, we are in deep shit:

A foreign country shall be designated as an Internet-restricting country if the President determines that the government of the country is directly or indirectly responsible for a systematic pattern of substantial restrictions on Internet freedom during the preceding 1-year period.

This means that as long as the U.S needs Israel to monitor Middle East “Democracy”, we will be the only Middle Eastern Country with both Internet Access and Internet Restriction…