smear campaign – Techdirt (original) (raw)

New Dumb Attack Against Gigi Sohn Tries To Shame Her For Being On The EFF’s Board

from the this-is-what-corruption-looks-like dept

We’ve explained how telecom and media giants have pulled out all the stops trying to block Gigi Sohn from being seated at the FCC. That has involved a sleazy smear campaign, seeded in the press by non-profits linked to companies like News Corporation, AT&T, and Comcast, falsely accusing Sohn of being a radical extremist who hates Hispanics, rural Americans, cops, puppies, and freedom.

With Sohn freshly re-nominated by the Biden administration, a new bizarre smear campaign popped up in press outlets favorable to industry. It began yesterday with this piece in the Daily Mail by Jen Smith (which I won’t link to) which accuses Sohn of having links to a purportedly scandalous nonprofit and a (gasp) dominatrix:

The nonprofit in question is the widely respected Electronic Frontier Foundation. The attack attempts to frighten rubes by making the EFF’s widely well-regarded policy advocacy on SESTA/FOSTA sound sleazy and scary. The EFF of course opposed SESTA/FOSTA because the law was an unconstitutional mess that harmed free speech and made sex workers and victims of human trafficking dramatically less safe.

Sohn joined the EFF’s board in 2018, so there’s no actual news here. The only goal of the report by the Daily Mail’s Jen Smith is to associate Sohn’s name in headlines with something scandalous. It’s gross, it’s homophobic, and it’s pretty typical of the attacks Sohn has faced for the better part of the last year as the first openly LGBTQ commission nominee in history.

The story was simultaneously run over at Fox News, which used a slightly less feral headline but still tried to falsely suggest Sohn opposes fighting human trafficking:

The goal of these attacks is to keep the FCC without a voting majority necessary to do anything popular with consumers, like holding telecom monopolies accountable, restoring net neutrality rules, restoring the FCC’s gutted consumer protection authority, or bringing back media consolidation restrictions. Its purpose is also to scare Senators on the fence away from voting to confirm Sohn.

This is how this game usually works. Some seedy right wing K Street public affairs firm hired by telecom or media (usually AT&T, Comcast, or News Corporation) will approach industry-friendly journalists asking them if they’d like a “scoop.” Said non-scoop is then run unquestioningly by said journalists, who wind up acting more like propagandist marionettes than anything resembling a reporter.

Then in a few months or weeks, when Sohn faces down a new confirmation hearing, you’ll see Republican Senators cite these reports verbatim as evidence Sohn shouldn’t be seated. It’s all a very dumb game designed to provide the illusion that these are genuine concerns based on genuine journalism, when the whole thing is just a big performance being orchestrated by some dodgy public affairs firm.

The entirety of the GOP opposes Sohn because that’s what they’ve been told to do by telecom and media giants if they want campaign contributions. Said giants have also targeted Democratic Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona, Catherine Cortez Mastro of Nevada and Joe Manchin of West Virginia to prevent Sohn from getting the basic Senate majority needed to move her nomination forward.

Recall that Trump’s FCC nominee, Nathan Simington, was named and confirmed to the FCC in under 30 days despite having virtually no telecom experience. In contrast Sohn, a hugely popular reformer with experience both in and out of government, is headed well into her second year of contentious hearings.

It’s still very likely Sohn gets confirmed, barring some epic and corrupt stupidity on the part of Democrats (an ever-present possibility). Telecom and media giants just want the process to take as long as humanly possible, so by the time she’s seated the FCC will only have enough time to handle a handful of issues before the next Presidential election risks undoing all of it.

It’s fairly telling that there’s so little in Sohn’s record to actually criticize that industry waterboys have been forced to resort to trying to make a scandal out of Sohn’s membership of a widely respected tech policy organization. Still, it’s another example of how grotesquely corrupt the U.S. is, how actual reformers are held to a comically higher standard than anyone else, how our press is fundamentally broken, and why, as they say, we can’t have nice things.

Filed Under: broadband, fcc, fosta, gigi sohn, human trafficking, lobbying, monopolies, net neutrality, sesta, sex work, smear campaign, telecom
Companies: eff

Why Won't Creative Future's Members Comment About This Hollywood Front Group Smearing A Well Respected Law Professor?

from the a-tragically-rhetorical-question dept

If you look in the dictionary, the word “projection” has many different definitions. I find it particularly amusing that in Merriam Webster’s dictionary, the following two are right next to each other:

This is a story that kind of involves both of those definitions, because it’s all about a front group, created and funded by Hollywood, very much “projecting” its own blame, guilt and responsibility onto one of the most respected and thoughtful copyright law professors. And… almost no one wants to comment on the organization’s shameful tactics. Perhaps some of you might help in my ongoing efforts to get literally any of Creative Future’s members to explain why it still supports the organization after its shameful smear campaign over the past few weeks and months.

Some of you may recall that during the run up to Hollywood trying to get Congress to pass SOPA, a terrible pro-censorship, anti-internet, mysterious Hollywood front group showed up called Creative America to advocate for SOPA. It was a Creative Disaster. While pretending to be a “grassroots” effort by “creatives,” it came out that the organization was actually very much created by Hollywood’s biggest studios:

CBS Corporation, NBC Universal, the Screen Actors Guild, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom, the Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Entertainment

The grassroots effort completely collapsed and Creative America received widespread mockery on the internet. In early 2014, the organization brought in new leadership and took on a new name: Creative Future, with the same Hollywood studios behind it, the same bogus “grassroots” rhetoric, but now lead by a former Hollywood studio boss. The board of Creative Future has remained staffed entirely by Hollywood big shots. The most recent filing from the organization shows that its Board of Directors includes: Alan Braverman (Senior VP and General Counsel at Disney), John Rogovin (Exec VP and General Counsel at Warner Bros.), Leah Weil (Senior Exec VP and General Counsel at Sony Pictures), Kimberly Harris (Exec VP of Comcast and General Counsel at NBC Universal), Jean Preweitt (CEO of the Independent Film & Television Alliance), Christa D’Alimonte (Exec VP and General Counsel at Viacom), Carl “Chip” Smith (Exec VP of Public Affairs for 21st Century Fox, at least until earlier this year when Disney took them over). It’s notable that D’Alimonte only joined in April of 2017, at the same time as Michael Fricklas, who was Exec VP & General Counsel at Viacom, left both Viacom and the Creative Future board — more or less confirming that Creative Future is a mouthpiece of the big Hollywood studios, and when one person leaves a studio (as Fricklas did), they’re immediately replaced by a new person from Hollywood.

In other words, Creative Future is pure astroturf, and is 100% about representing the interests of Hollywood’s biggest studios.

Over the last few years, it seems that Creative Future has gotten more and more unhinged in its conspiracy theory pushing. Earlier this year, for example, it attacked the DC think tank R Street, because it had provided a grant to us. Creative Future declared that this somehow proved that R Street was “anti-copyright,” because (it claimed) we are “anti-copyright.” This is wrong on so many levels — in particular, because the R Street grant as specifically for our Working Futures project, and the money from the grant was used to pay authors to write creative science fiction stories. And, I would bet Creative Future’s entire operating budget (of over $3 million) that the contract we gave to those authors (in which they retain the copyright to their stories and are told they can do whatever they want with those stories, including republishing them elsewhere) was a hell of a lot better than the contracts any of the companies on Creative Future’s board signs with its “creatives.”

But we’re something of a sideshow here. The real anger from Creative Future over the past few years has been directed at EFF. For reasons that I cannot comprehend, a few extraordinarily confused Google haters, like to insist that EFF is a Google front group. Creative Future is one of the most vocal about this (see the above definition regarding projection). Creative Future actually is a Hollywood front group. The idea that EFF is a Google front group is crazy. Remember, EFF has regularly criticized Google’s practices, including filing an FTC complaint about Google’s privacy practices and is currently fighting hard against Google concerning how California’s new privacy law will be implemented.

And, for all the talk of claims that Google “funds” EFF, Google gave EFF a grand total of $7,500 in 2018. That’s out of the $15.1 million that EFF brought in, nearly $10 million of which came from individuals (either by themselves or their own personal foundations). In insisting that Google really funds EFF, Creative Future likes to point to various cy pres awards, in which a court forces Google to give money to EFF to atone for some sort of wrong doing. That’s not, in any way, Google choosing to fund EFF. It’s a court punishing Google over its failures, and having it fund EFF and others as punishment. Between Creative Future and EFF one of these organizations is a front group for a set of giant corporate interests, and it ain’t EFF.

But Creative Future has its bogeyman, and so when news came down that EFF had appointed renowned and incredibly well-respected copyright law professor Pam Samuelson to be its new board chairperson, Creative Future went on the attack. It first published a hilariously full of “projection” blog post accusing Samuelson of being “anti-copyright.” It’s not even remotely worth debunking each of the points, other than to note that not a single one of them is accurate. It repeatedly frames reasonable positions taken on copyright as extreme. It takes statements of opinion — including the claim independent artists (you know, the ones not supported by Creative Future’s esteemed board of legacy Hollywood big shots) are put at “some disadvantage” in fighting piracy — as “lying to lawmakers.” What? It also (perhaps no surprise) claims that Samuelson’s reasonable arguments regarding the copyrigtability of APIs in the Oracle/Google fight proves she’s anti-copyright.

That last one is particularly stupid, given that Samuelson has been among the most knowledgeable experts on questions regarding the copyright of interfaces since before Google existed, and the idea that siding with Google in the Google/Oracle case is “anti-copyright” suggests a near total lack of understanding on the topic.

There’s a lot more in there, but nearly all of it is projection a la the top definition that I quoted at the top of this article. Creative Future is a front group. Creative Future regularly lies. Creative Future always defends Hollywood’s biggest studios, and not the interests of independent artists.

In response to this fact-free smearing of such a respected professor, Microsoft (who no one would ever claim is “anti-copyright”) told Creative Future to remove its name from Creative Future’s list of “members.” Microsoft has chosen not to comment publicly on this issue, but two separate sources confirmed to us that the decision to leave Creative Future was 100% in response to the smearing of Prof. Samuelson, which people at Microsoft believed to be beyond any reasonable standard of decorum, even if the company still supports Creative Future’s mission. Most organizations might stay quiet when receiving a rebuke like that, but Creative Future instead tried to brand Microsoft as anti-copyright, because apparently facts are completely optional in the delusional world of Hollywood.

Creative Future then decided to run a second article smearing Samuelson, literally blaming her for Microsoft deciding to disassociate itself with the organization:

We?re also unhappy because she asked Microsoft why their logo was on CreativeFuture?s website. In response, Microsoft emailed us asking us to remove their logo. Of course, we did so.

This statement is somewhat telling. For all of Creative Future’s attempts to describe the hundreds of organizations on its website as “members,” it seems quite clear that most of them are not “dues paying” members. They just have their logo on the website.

With that in mind, I began to wonder what were some of the other organizations on that same page of logos, and what they felt about their name being associated with flat out lies being used to smear one of the most respected law professors in the world. There are hundreds of logos on the page. Over the past few weeks I’ve contacted somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty of those members to ask for any comment on the situation. Below are all their comments.

…

Ha ha, just kidding. Not a single organization was willing to comment on the record. The vast majority completely ignored my request. A few sent back generic “no comments.” One said the situation was “complicated.” Oh really? The most startling to me, however, were the organizations on the list whose focuses are entirely about promoting women’s voices, and fighting back against stereotypes about women. I figured, at the very least, those organizations — including Women in Film, Women Make Movies and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media — would at least have something to say about an organization put together by Hollywood’s biggest studios smearing such a respected female law professor.

But, nope. None of them wished to comment — even after it was pointed out that Microsoft had left Creative Future over this mess.

Other organizations that I thought might have a bit of a spine, but who refused to comment: Alamo Draft House (I will find other places to watch movies, thanks), the American Film Institute, Comscore, Crackle (do they still even exist?), IMAX, the Jim Henson Company, Legion M, Miramax (you’d think, post Harvey Weinstein, they’d be more open to recognizing issues, but nope), National Hispanic Media Coalition (this one’s especially disappointing, as they’ve been a staunch ally on net neutrality, and even posted a guest post on Techdirt earlier this year), PodcastOne, the Tribeca Film Institute, and many, many more.

And, of course, none of the giant Hollywood studios, which set up Creative Future and hide behind its “edgy” attacks on people, wanted to comment either. I wonder why, Disney, ComcastUniversal, Viacom, Sony, and Warner Bros., might want to ignore the fact that an organization that they set up and control, is out there smearing respected law professors? Actually, I don’t wonder at all.

Anyway, I recommend that people scan Creative Future’s big list of “logos” and see if you recognize any. Feel free to ask them (politely, of course) why they’re willing to have their name associated with an organization smearing such a well-respected professor with outright lies?

In the end, though, this all comes down to pure projection — and not the one that involves a screen. Creative Future is a front group for big businesses, pretending to be a “grassroots” group for creatives. As such, it can’t even imagine that there really are legitimate organizations like EFF that are actually focused on protecting individual rights and are actually supported by individual members. And thus, they feel the need to project Creative Future’s own sins upon such organizations. It also can’t imagine that someone like Prof. Samuelson, with her decades of clear, careful, nuanced, and thoughtful writing and advocacy on better copyright law (i.e., copyright law that protects everyone’s rights, not just big Hollywood studios, and includes in that the public’s rights), could possibly come by her positions honestly.

This whole episode has been revealing. Not about Prof. Samuelson or EFF. But it’s said an awful lot about the type of people who run the major Hollywood studios. Alan Braverman, John Rogovin, Leah Weil, Kimberly Harris, Jean Prewitt, Christa D’Alimonte and Chip Smith: this cowardly attack is on you. If you’d like to actually provide a real comment on this nonsense you’ve helped create, you know how to reach me.

Filed Under: alan braverman, chip smith, christa d'alimonte, hollywood, jean preweitt, john rogovin, lies, pam samuelson, projection, smear campaign
Companies: cbs, comcast, creative future, disney, eff, google, microsoft, nbc universal, sony pictures entertainment, viacom, warner bros.

Boeing Accused Of Covert, Coordinated Op-Ed Smear Campaign Against Space X

from the disinformation-nation dept

Thu, Oct 11th 2018 10:46am - Karl Bode

For years we’ve noted how the American press has an absolutely horrible tendency to run guest Op-Eds without disclosing the author’s financial conflicts of interest(s). Jesse Jackson, for example, can sometimes be found comparing efforts to bring competition to the cable box to racism in the 60s, without disclosing the cable industry’s underlying influence. Similarly, former Representative and fair use champion Rick Boucher can often be found praising CISPA, denying a lack of competition in broadband or attacking net neutrality in Op-Ed pages nationwide on behalf of AT&T with zero disclosure of his real financial motivations.

The act of republishing these missives without clearly disclosing financial conflicts of interests isn’t just unethical, it pollutes the national discourse, undermines already shaky trust in media, and contributes to a sound wall of disinformation as giant companies try to sell their latest megamerger, pass anti-consumer regulations and legislation, undermine a competitor, or justify terrible behavior.

One more recent example of this phenomenon comes courtesy of Boeing, which is being accused of running a covert smear campaign against Space X via media outlets that fail to adequately disclose ulterior financial motives of Op-Ed authors.

Back in August, just around the time that Boeing was hyping the company’s Starliner spacecraft program, a series of Op-Eds began showing up in newspapers nationwide attacking Space X and its allegedly unsafe fueling practices. The articles, which appeared everywhere from the Houston Chronicle to the Washington Times, all purported to simply be worried about astronaut safety. All were penned by Richard Hagar, who worked for NASA during the Apollo program, but now resides in Tennessee. All implied repeatedly that Space X was ignoring safety standards and putting astronauts at risk.

But amusingly, when Ars Technica tried to track down Hagar, they discovered that he didn’t actually write the vast majority of the Op-Eds published in countless news outlets nationwide under his name. Instead, the missives were penned by a PR and policy shop with an expertise in astroturf and other disingenuous messaging:

“To try to understand his viewpoint, Ars attempted to reach Hagar by phone and email in September. In the course of this process, we learned that he did not actually submit many of these op-eds.

In fact, based upon our research, at least four of the six op-eds that we located were submitted by two people with gmail.com addresses. Their names were Josh Brevik and Casey Murray. Further research revealed that two people with these names worked as “associates” at a Washington, DC-based public relations firm named Law Media Group or LMG. We reached out to multiple editors at papers that ran the op-eds, and they confirmed that no LMG affiliation was disclosed to them. Attempts to reach Julian Epstein, the chief executive of LMG, by phone and email were unsuccessful.”

Boeing is an LMG client, and has worked previously for the company on past projects by “developing messaging” and crafting a “social media campaign amplifying our nationwide chorus of genuine American voices supporting Boeing.” Boeing is also Space X’s only competitor in the commercial crew program, so the mathematics here should be fairly obvious. Law Media Group (LMG) was busted for this exact sort of thing ten years ago and apparently absolutely nothing has changed, making it abundantly clear just how little most people care about this sort of disinformation.

News outlets have little incentive to crack down on this kind of disingenuous dreck, as they don’t want to anger the companies footing the bill. Most Americans are totally clueless about the perils on zero transparency in this regard, so public pressure to actually do something about it for many media outlets remains largely nonexistent. And while you could pass a law mandating that corporations are free to speak as long as they speak for themselves, countless corporations would certainly be quick to claim their ability to spread misleading nonsense via covert intermediaries violates their First Amendment rights.

Aside from applying continuous public pressure on news outlets to behave more transparently and ethically, it’s a problem that doesn’t seem to have an obvious solution.

Filed Under: disinformation, fake news, opeds, smear campaign, space
Companies: boeing, law media group, spacex

House Intelligence Committee's List Of 'Snowden's Lies' Almost Entirely False

from the and-it-took-'em-two-years dept

So, last week, I wrote up a long analysis of the House Intelligence Committee’s ridiculous smear campaign against Ed Snowden, highlighting a bunch of misleading to false statements that the report made in trying to undermine Snowden’s credibility as he seeks a pardon from President Obama. The Committee insisted that it had spent two years working on the report, but it seems like maybe they just needed all that time because they couldn’t find any actual dirt on Snowden.

In my analysis, I pointed to some of Snowden’s public responses, highlighting how the House Intel Committee was either completely misinformed or lying about Snowden. But Barton Gellman, one of the four reporters who Snowden originally gave his documents to, and who has done some amazing reporting on the Snowden leaks (not to mention, who is writing a book about Snowden) has responded to the report as well, and highlights just how incredibly dishonest the report is.

Gellman focuses on just one section — the weird section that tries to make out Snowden as a “serial exaggerator and fabricator.” Here’s that paragraph again:

Fourth, Snowden was, and remains, a serial exaggerator and fabricator. A close review of Snowden’s official employment records and submissions reveals a pattern of intentional lying. He claimed to have left Army basic training because of broken legs when in fact he washed out because of shin splints. He claimed to have obtained a high school degree equivalent when in fact he never did. He claimed to have worked for the CIA as a “senior advisor,” which was a gross exaggeration of his entry-level duties as a computer technician. He also doctored his performance evaluations and obtained new positions at NSA by exaggerating his resume and stealing the answers to an employment test. In May 2013, Snowden informed his supervisor that he would be out of the office to receive treatment for worsening epilepsy. In reality, he was on his way to Hong Kong with stolen secrets.

As we noted on Friday, Snowden disputed almost everything in this paragraph, saying that it would be “extremely unwise” for them to say he didn’t have a GED, and (more importantly) pointed out that it wasn’t shin splints that kept him out of the Army, and that the “doctored performance evaluation” was actually him showing (as requested by his managers) a “proof of concept” of a vulnerability in the CIA’s computer system.

Gellman takes all of these points even deeper and debunks the House Intelligence Committee’s findings with checkable facts. The “shin splints” claim? Gellman has reviewed Snowden’s Army paperwork. It wasn’t shin splints.

This is verifiably false for anyone who, as the committee asserts it did, performs a ?close review of Snowden?s official employment records.? Snowden?s Army paperwork, some of which I have examined, says he met the demanding standards of an 18X Special Forces recruit and mustered into the Army on June 3, 2004. The diagnosis that led to his discharge, on crutches, was bilateral tibial stress fractures.

A shin splint comes from the muscles and bone tissue around the tibia being overworked, often by repetitive injury. It’s true that tibia stress fractures are sometimes confused with shin splints, but an actual fracture is much more serious (and doctors will sometimes check to see if shin splints are really a stress fracture if they’re not going away). If Snowden was in the hospital and on crutches with bilateral tibial stress fractures, that’s way past shin splints. The House Intel Committee was either lied to or is lying here to the public — ironically in the section they claim is about Snowden’s fabrications and exaggerations.

How about the claim that he never got his GED? It turns out that Gellman actually has the evidence:

I do not know how the committee could get this one wrong in good faith. According to the official Maryland State Department of Education test report, which I have reviewed, Snowden sat for the high school equivalency test on May 4, 2004. He needed a score of 2250 to pass. He scored 3550. His Diploma No. 269403 was dated June 2, 2004, the same month he would have graduated had he returned to Arundel High School after losing his sophomore year to mononucleosis. In the interim, he took courses at Anne Arundel Community College.

So, again, in the section on fabrications and exaggerations, the House Intel Committee appears to be the one fabricating stuff. It again raises the question of whether or not they were lied to or just failed to do basic due diligence into the truth of the claim.

What about the claim about his level in the CIA? Again, Gellman to the rescue with evidence:

Judge for yourself. Here are the three main roles Snowden played at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). (1) His entry level position, as a contractor, was system administrator (one among several) of the agency?s Washington metropolitan area network. (2) After that he was selected for and spent six months in training as a telecommunications information security officer, responsible for all classified technology in U.S. embassies overseas. The CIA deployed him to Geneva under diplomatic cover, complete with an alias identity and a badge describing him as a State Department attache. (3) In his third CIA job, the title on his Dell business card was ?solutions consultant / cyber referent? for the intelligence community writ large?the company?s principal point of contact for cyber contracts and proposals. In that role, Snowden met regularly with the chiefs and deputy chiefs of the CIA?s technical branches to talk through their cutting edge computer needs.

Gellman also has more detail on that whole “doctoring his performance evaluation” claim, noting how the House Intel Committee was clearly exaggerating the truth:

Truly deceptive, this. I will tell the story in my book. Suffice to say that Snowden discovered and reported a security hole in the CIA?s human resources intranet page. With his supervisor?s permission, he made a benign demonstration of how a hostile actor could take control. He did not change the content of his performance evaluation. He changed the way it displayed on screen.

Gellman has a few more in his post as well, but the short version is that “four of the six claims are egregiously false, and a fifth is hard to credit.” Oh, and the one “true” claim? That he lied to his bosses saying he was going for epilepsy treatment when he was really heading off to hand over the files to reporters.

And so we’re left with the question: how the hell did the House Intelligence Committee spend two years… to get everything so incredibly wrong? And will anyone actually call them on this?

Filed Under: barton gellman, ed snowden, house intelligence committee, pardon snowden, smear campaign

Enigma Software Countersued For Waging A 'Smear Campaign' Against Site It Claimed Defamed It

from the ctrl-alt-middlefinger dept

Enigma Software — creator of the SpyHunter suite of malware/adware removal tools — recently sued BleepingComputer for forum posts by a third-party volunteer moderator that it claimed were defamatory. In addition, it brought Lanham Act trademark infringement claims against the site — all in response to a couple of posts that portrayed it in a negative light.

The posts pointed out that the company had a history of threatening critics with litigation and had engaged in a variety of deceptive tactics, including triggering false positives to promote its spyware-cleaning products and placing paying customers on a periodic payment plan that ran in perpetuity under the guise of a one-time “removal” payment.

A somewhat bizarre decision by the judge presiding over the case allowed Enigma’s questionable complaint to survive BleepingComputer’s motion to dismiss. In doing so, the decision also suggested the judge was willing to poke holes in Section 230 protections — something that’s been happening far too frequently in recent months.

This bogus lawsuit should never have gotten this far. Enigma’s original defamation claims contained wording found nowhere in the posts it didn’t like, and the company had to make several inferences on behalf of the website it was suing to cobble together its complaint. The lack of a decent anti-SLAPP law in New York kept its defamation claims from being ejected on arrival. Faced with having to litigate its way out of this stupid mess, BleepingComputer has gone on the offensive.

The assertions made in its countersuit suggest Enigma Computer has been — for quite some time — fighting speech it doesn’t like (the forum posts it sued over) with more speech. Unfortunately, if the “more speech” deployed is just shadiness and bogus claims (the same sort of thing it’s suing BC for), then “more speech” isn’t really a remedy.

Lawrence Abrams of BleepingComputer gives a brief overview of the latest filing at his company’s website. (h/t The Register)

Yesterday, BleepingComputer filed its Answer, Affirmative Defenses, and Counterclaims in response to Enigma Software’s Second Amended Complaint. In our filing we stand by our statements that Bleeping Computer has done nothing wrong, that there is no smear campaign against Enigma Software, and that any of the statements posted by the site’s volunteer, Quietman7, are either true or purely opinion.

On the other hand, since being sued we have uncovered information that makes us believe that Enigma Software or their agents have been allegedly performing a long term campaign of attacks against BleepingComputer.com.

Our counterclaim includes examples of the following:

Furthermore, in all of the above examples, the sites are or have been promoting Enigma’s SpyHunter product.

The filing [PDF] fills in the details. Enigma (or its agent) has been creating websites that funnel users to its SpyHunter product while simultaneously suggesting BleepingComputer and its tools are malware.

One site is called Adware Bleeping Computer Removal, which hints that “Bleeping Computer” is something that is unwanted and in need of removal. Sure enough, the site offers instructions on how to remove adware while providing a handy link to download SpyHunter. Another Enigma software-pushing site uses the URL bleepingcomputerregistryfix.com.

Others are hidden behind URLs a bit more innocuous. Enginemachinesupplyshop.com contains pages that claim two tools BleepingComputer has created — RKill and Unhide — are “malware/viruses” that “infect” users’ computers and should be removed. Naturally, the site recommends SpyHunter. It also includes statements that seem far more defamatory than any of the allegations Enigma is suing BleepingComputer for.

rkill.com is a dangerous computer virus which can destroy the infected computer and record your personal information. If you’re not careful when you visit websites or use online resources, your computer is vulnerable to virus attacks. It has the ability to slow down the computer performance seriously. The computer user’s personal information may be got by the virus makers through the virus, such as credit card or bank account details and social contacts’ information. Therefore, the best way to cancel the malicious behaviors of rkill.com is to get rid of it as soon as possible.

This is what RKill actually does.

RKill is a program that was developed at BleepingComputer.com that attempts to terminate known malware processes so that your normal security software can then run and clean your computer of infections. When RKill runs it will kill malware processes and then removes incorrect executable associations and fixes policies that stop us from using certain tools. When finished it will display a log file that shows the processes that were terminated while the program was running.

BleepingComputer provides this utility free of charge to users.

The entire filing is worth reading to see just how much Enigma has allegedly done in an attempt to do damage to BleepingComputer’s reputation. From what’s shown here, it looks as though Enigma’s history as a shady, litigious pusher of dubiously-effective software isn’t exactly history. It’s still very much a part of its reputation management scheme — one that does nothing to elevate Enigma’s esteem and everything to drag critics in the same business down to its level.

Filed Under: cda 230, free speech, reviews, slapp, smear campaign, spyhunter
Companies: bleeping computer, enigma software

Smoking Gun: MPAA Emails Reveal Plan To Run Anti-Google Smear Campaign Via Today Show And WSJ

from the editorial-independence? dept

If you talk to the reporters who work for various big media companies, they insist that they have true editorial independence from the business side of their companies. They insist that the news coverage isn’t designed to reflect the business interests of their owners. Of course, most people have always suspected this was bullshit — and you could see evidence of this in things like the fact that the big TV networks refused to cover the SOPA protests. But — until now — there’s never necessarily been a smoking gun with evidence of how such business interests influences the editorial side.

Earlier this month, we noted that the Hollywood studios were all resisting subpoenas from Google concerning their super cozy relationship with Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, whose highly questionable “investigation” of Google appeared to actually be run by the MPAA and the studios themselves. The entire “investigation” seemed to clearly be an attempt to mislead the public into believing that it was somehow illegal for Google’s search engine to find stuff that people didn’t like online. A court has already ruled that Hood pretty clearly acted in bad faith to deprive Google of its First Amendment rights. As the case has continued, Google has sought much more detail on just how much of the investigation was run by the MPAA and the studios — and Hollywood has vigorously resisted, claiming that they really had nothing to do with all of this, which was a laughable assertion.

However, in a filing on Thursday, Google revealed one of the few emails that they have been able to get access to so far, and it’s stunning. It’s an email between the MPAA and two of Jim Hood’s top lawyers in the Mississippi AG’s office, discussing the big plan to “hurt” Google. Beyond influencing other Attorneys General (using misleading fake “setups” of searches for “bad” material) and paying for fake anti-Google research, the lawyers from Hood’s office flat out admit that they’re expecting the MPAA and the major studios to have its media arms run a coordinated propaganda campaign of bogus anti-Google stories:

Media: We want to make sure that the media is at the NAAG meeting. We propose working with MPAA (Vans), Comcast, and NewsCorp (Bill Guidera) to see about working with a PR firm to create an attack on Google (and others who are resisting AG efforts to address online piracy). This PR firm can be funded through a nonprofit dedicated to IP issues. The “live buys” should be available for the media to see, followed by a segment the next day on the Today Show (David green can help with this). After the Today Show segment, you want to have a large investor of Google (George can help us determine that) come forward and say that Google needs to change its behavior/demand reform. Next, you want NewsCorp to develop and place an editorial in the WSJ emphasizing that Google’s stock will lose value in the face of a sustained attack by AGs and noting some of the possible causes of action we have developed.

In other words, Jim Hood and the MPAA were out and out planning a coordinated media attack on Google using the editorial properties that supposedly claim to have editorial independence from the business side. Notice that with the WSJ piece, they flat out admit that the editorial will be based on the ideas that “we” have developed. If you work for the WSJ, your editorial independence just got shot down. Remember when CBS stepped in and interfered editorially with CNET for giving an award to Dish at the same time that CBS was in a legal fight over that same device? That resulted in reporters quitting.

This is worse.

This is an out and out case where the MPAA is admitting to a plan whereby it will use mainstream media properties to run bogus and misleading stories to “attack” Google, to further the MPAA’s (believed, but misleadingly so) business interests. Is this really how the Today Show and the WSJ pick their editorial topics?

The “plan” goes even further after that, getting the MPAA to find (and almost certainly pay for) a lawyer to work with the “shareholder” previously identified to file legal filings against Google.

Following the media blitz, you want Bill Guidera and Rick Smotkin to work with the PR firm to identify a lawyer specializing in SEC matters to work with a stockholder. This lawyer should be able to the [sic] identify the appropriate regulatory filing to be made against Google.

As Google notes in its legal filing about this email, the “plan” states that if this effort fails, then the next step will be to file the subpoena (technically a CID or “civil investigatory demand”) on Google, written by the MPAA but signed by Hood. As Google points out, this makes it pretty clear (1) that the MPAA, studios and Hood were working hand in hand in all of this and (2) that the subpoena had no legitimate purpose behind it, but rather was the final step in a coordinated media campaign to pressure Google to change the way its search engine works. It’s pretty damning:

The document thus shows that the CID was not the foundation of a legitimate investigation?rather, it was a ?final step? that would be issued only ?if necessary? to further pressure Google to capitulate to the demands of AG Hood and his supporters.

The court has yet to rule on what else Hollywood needs to turn over, but just from what’s coming out already, serious questions are being raised (1) about Jim Hood and his office and what they were up to as well as (2) the editorial independence of the media arms of the MPAA studios, including both NBCUniversal (“the Today Show”) and NewsCorp. (the Wall Street Journal).

Filed Under: editorial independence, jim hood, media, mississippi, news, smear campaign, today show, wsj
Companies: comcast, google, mpaa, nbc universal, newscorp

Internet Takes Smears Against Glenn Greenwald And Make It An Awesome Meme

from the #ggscandals dept

Ah, the days when you love “the internet.” We already wrote about how some in the mainstream media — including the NY Times and the NY Daily News — had decided to pursue what were clearly smear pieces on reporter Glenn Greenwald, who broke the NSA surveillance story with leaks from Ed Snowden. The smear campaign involved digging way back into the past and dredging up a couple of completely minor things that weren’t newsworthy when they happened and aren’t newsworthy now. What was encouraging was reading the comments on the NYDN piece, which we won’t give traffic to by linking from here, where most of the commenters condemned the paper and the reporter for the smear campaign.

However, “the internet” knows how to take something stupid and turn it into an awesome meme. Witness the #ggscandals hashtag on Twitter, in which people are coming up with a variety of fake “scandals” that involved Glenn Greenwald, highlighting just how ridiculously petty the claims being levied against Greenwald really are. The tweets are coming fast and furious. Here’s just a random sample of tweets that came in on the tag over the course of less than a minute:

In one simple move, a ton of people on the internet are showing the mainstream media that is trying to smear Greenwald what they think of them — picking up on random tiny petty issues from his past and trying to make it out like it has any news value these days. Maybe, next time, instead of digging into Greenwald’s past to try to make something out of nothing, reporters from the NY Times and the NY Daily News could, maybe, look into the NSA’s surveillance efforts. You know, the story they didn’t break and have been slow to report on.

Filed Under: ggscandals, glenn greenwald, internet memes, ny daily news, ny times, smear campaign
Companies: ny daily news, ny times

Shameful: Other Journalists Now A Part Of Ridiculous Smear Campaign Against Glenn Greenwald

from the digging,-digging,-digging dept

This is just getting ridiculous. We’ve covered the various stories of politicians and journalists suggesting that Glenn Greenwald should be arrested and charged for merely doing investigative journalism and reporting on the leaks of Ed Snowden. However, Greenwald himself has now revealed that a variety of mainstream press outlets are working on stories that are clearly designed to smear him, digging into minor events from over a decade ago to somehow attack his credibility. Greenwald is (smartly) getting out in front of these by revealing the details ahead of time, though it’s ridiculous that he should need to. We won’t even mention what the “issues” are, because they’re trifling nothings from a decade or so ago that weren’t newsworthy then and are not newsworthy today. What they are, clearly, are attempts to attack Greenwald’s character for merely being one of the key reporters who has helped to expose massive government overreach in surveillance.

The actual story is about the government’s overreach. But, rather than deal with that, reporters from newspapers like the NY Times want to write Greenwald into the story? Really? We have a huge opportunity for journalists to dig into the real story: just how much spying on people various governments around the globe are doing today. And yet, instead, they want to focus on minor quibbles from a decade ago involving the reporter who actually did the work they failed to do? It’s a shameful reflection on the state of much of the media today.

Filed Under: ed snowden, glenn greenwald, journalism, nsa, nsa surveillance, smear campaign
Companies: ny times

Leaked Documents Detail The MPAA's Plans For Sock Puppetry To Mislead People About Richard O'Dwyer

from the nice-try-guys dept

Honestly, the MPAA needs to hire someone who actually understands a modern media strategy — rather than a media strategy from the last century. It seems like nearly everything they do or say is calculated to piss off the public, rather than convince them of anything reasonable. Every chance they have to say the right thing, they say the wrong thing. Every chance they have to take a step towards making a connection with the public, they go the other way. We’ve seen how they call their biggest fans criminals. We’ve seen how they attack the internet. The latest is their Quixotic campaign against Richard O’Dwyer.

TorrentFreak, which lately has been on a streak of finding and publishing leaked info from the legacy entertainment industry, has done it again, publishing the MPAA’s talking points document for responding to press inquiries about O’Dwyer, the UK college student that the US government is trying to extradite from the UK for running TVShack.net. They also have the MPAA’s plans to find sock puppets to attack O’Dwyer. The two documents are from July 19th, so it’s quite recent, and they try to respond to Jimmy Wales’ recent involvement in trying to stop the extradition process. As with any good propaganda, the MPAA appears to take comments out of context to twist them against O’Dwyer. For example, it quotes that the site reminded people of how much money they were saving by watching free videos, rather than paying for movies. But nothing in that statement says that the videos they were watching were infringing copies — just substitutes for going to the theater.

The sock puppet document is the really telling one, in that they admit that that the “overall media coverage has been and will continue to be challenging.” Now, when pretty much everyone sides with O’Dwyer and against the MPAA, a normal, sane organization might think that its strategy is (perhaps) a mistake. But the MPAA instead decides to double down by trying to find sock puppets to publish blog posts and editorials about why O’Dwyer is a dirty stinking criminal:

To counter these assertions, the MPAA and its allies need a coordinated effort to focus more on the criminal activity involved in the operation of TVShack and other similar linking sites. Ideally, this would be done through third parties – but finding third parties – especially in the United Kingdom – has been very difficult so far, so the MPAA must be prepared to respond to media requests on the issue and set the record straight to counter the misinformation campaign by our opponents.

The thing is, the only “misinformation campaign” is coming from the MPAA itself, with these talking points and “how can we get stooges to spin this” document. The folks supporting O’Dwyer have no such things. They just speak the truth.

Furthermore, the documents completely ignore the legal arguments that make the O’Dwyer case incredibly questionable. They, of course, highlight the recent surfthechannel.com ruling in the UK to support the argument that O’Dwyer was breaking the law in the UK and the US. But that ignores the many questions raised by that ruling, and the fact that multiple similar cases went the other way or that similar US cases also seem to be going the other way too (though, that last one came out after this document was written).

There are also some laughable claims about how the decision to go after O’Dwyer was made by Homeland Security and ICE. However, as documents in other cases have shown, ICE relied heavily on claims from the RIAA and MPAA, despite little evidence to support those claims.

Separately, the MPAA weakly tries to hit back on the claims about internet freedom by saying that “this case isn’t about Internet freedom. It’s about a man profiting from theft.” Funny, he hasn’t been charged with “theft” as far as I can tell. It seems that the MPAA has trouble with ever being truthful — even when claiming its providing facts to counter misinformation. And, as the Posner ruling recently showed, being a third party site that has embeds of infringing videos isn’t infringing itself — so arguing that O’Dwyer is some sort of master criminal is pretty laughable.

Then there’s this:

Copyright law is a tool to protect the work of creators and makers, not censorship

They should try to tell that to some of the many people whom copyright has been used to censor over the years. The fact that copyright was supposed to be a tool to protect creators does not mean it can’t be used for censorship. It is, regularly. The two things are hardly mutually exclusive. And, if the MPAA were being honest (ha ha, I know…) it would note that it doesn’t represent the interests of creators and makers at all. It represents the studios, who do whatever they can to rip off content creators… while keeping the copyright for themselves. If the MPAA wants to spew bogus “talking points,” (and get sock puppets to do so for it) perhaps it should start by figuring out how to defend its regular actions that block artists from getting paid.

In the end, though, this just highlights how incredibly tone deaf the MPAA and its communications staff is to public perception. Attacking Richard O’Dwyer, who has strong public support behind him is not a winning strategy by any means. I’m trying to figure out what the MPAA thinks it’s accomplishing here and I’m drawing a blank. The more the MPAA seeks to demonize O’Dwyer, the worse it looks. Even if he is extradited and convicted, all they’re doing is creating another hero/martyr, and more people who think the MPAA is an old, out of touch, unwilling-to-adapt monster, locking up college students. At best, I’m thinking the MPAA thinks this will act as an “education campaign” targeted at other sites running forums like O’Dwyer’s. But that seems doubtful at best. Similar sites are all over the internet and have been for years. All this effort is doing is helping the MPAA dig its own hole deeper and deeper. It’s like a perfect case study in how not to do communications strategy today.

Filed Under: copyright, extradition, richard o'dwyer, smear campaign, sock puppets, surrogates
Companies: mpaa

How Facebook's Dreadfully Executed Smear Campaign Against Google Has Increased Scrutiny Of Facebook's Own Privacy Issues

from the backfiring-in-a-big-way dept

It appears that Facebook’s really weak (and childish) attempt to hire big-time PR firm Burson-Marsteller to run a smear campaign against Google is backfiring in even bigger ways. Beyond just making the company look bad and petty, the whole campaign turns out to have done the exact opposite of its intention. That is, the point of the smear campaign was to call into question Google’s treatment of user privacy in its Social Circle feature, allegedly because Facebook was sick of being the focus of everyone’s privacy concerns.

Well, consider that plan a huge failure. While most people analyzing Google’s privacy setup with Social Circle say that Facebook’s concerns are significantly overstated, the whole fiasco has actually resulted in more people questioning Facebook’s methods of handling privacy, and they don’t look all that good. In fact, Steven Levy points out that the attack on Google is so misguided, because even if Social Circle ended up being a privacy violation, the real problem would have come from Facebook, rather than Google:

But here’s what makes the least sense — if there were privacy problems about Facebook information in Google Social Circle (which has now been transformed into a different product called Social Search), they may well have been a result of Facebook?s own practices.

Facebook was griping that Google is getting information about its users without permission. But some information that users share with Facebook is available publicly, even to people who aren?t their friends in in their social networks ? or even are members of Facebook. It?s not because outsiders raided the service and exposed that information. It?s because Facebook chose to expose it.

It appears this strategy is backfiring on multiple levels…

Filed Under: backfire, privacy, smear campaign
Companies: burson marsteller, facebook, google