streisand effect – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Techdirt Podcast Episode 404: From The Streisand Effect To Bluesky

from the back-for-now dept

It’s been a few weeks, but we’re back! Although the podcast schedule is still going to be sporadic for a little while longer (Mike explains further in the intro) we’ve got a couple cross-post episodes lined up, starting with today’s. Recently, Mike joined Ed Zitron on his Better Offline podcast for a far-reaching interview about (among other things) the history of Techdirt, the future of Bluesky, and the origins of the Streisand Effect. You can listen to the whole conversation here on this week’s episode.

You can also download this episode directly in MP3 format.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Filed Under: better offline, ed zitron, podcast, streisand effect, techdirt
Companies: bluesky

Intuit Asks The Verge To Delete Part Of Interview With Its CEO; The Verge Declined

from the we-declined dept

There are examples of the Streisand Effect… and then there are examples of the Streisand Effect. And, frankly, what Intuit just decided to do to itself must surely be one of the most explosive and idiotic examples of the Streisand Effect I’ve ever come across.

Readers here will be familiar with our posts about Intuit. The company that is behind everything from the TurboTax software platform to Credit Karma and more has also built itself a nefarious reputation due to both its active lobbying to keep the tax-filing system in America as complicated as possible (so it can make more money) as well as some of the more cynical and dastardly anti-consumer behaviors to hide its own free tax filing options as I’ve seen (so it could make more money). The company preyed on everyone from the typical lower-income member of the public to American military veterans. It was all so bad that the FTC sued the company, generating a settlement in which Intuit was ordered to pay out $141 million back to its victims.

The Verge’s Decoder podcast covers all kinds of topics in the digital space. The podcast regularly has guests on for interviews. Most recently, Decoder had on Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi. And the interview appears to have proceeded normally. Host Nilay Patel and Goodarzi covered a variety of topics about the interrelated nature of Intuit’s different business units, the strategy behind building a cohesive company offering around them, and how the CEO and company navigated making those decisions. And, as you might expect, the topic of Intuit’s lobbying against tax reform in America came up as well. This is straight from Patel’s writeup accompanying the podcast release.

I couldn’t have the CEO of Intuit on without asking about tax reform in the United States. Individual income taxes are more complicated in the US than in almost any other developed economy, and Intuit has been lobbying hard since the late 1990s to keep it that way to protect TurboTax, spending nearly $3.8 million in lobbying in 2023 alone. There’s been extensive reporting about it. This lobbying has had mixed results: truly free online direct filing with the IRS began as a pilot program this year and is expanding to be available for more than half the US population in 2025.

It’s also not just lobbying: in 2022, a coalition of attorneys general from all 50 states got Intuit to agree to a $141 million settlement that required Intuit to refund low-income Americans who were eligible for free filing but were redirected to paid products. In 2023, the FTC found that TurboTax’s “free” marketing was willfully deceptive, and after the agency won an appeal early this year, Intuit was ordered to stop doing it.

I asked about that, and Sasan disagreed with me, and we went back and forth for a few minutes on it. It’s Decoder; we have exchanges like this all the time, and I didn’t think anything of it.

At no point were there any complaints in the interview about the topic. Whether any topics were said to be off limits for the interview is unsaid in the writeup, but Goodarzi’s participation in answering the question is a tacit approval of the topic at the absolute least. So, as Patel says, the interview concluded and he didn’t think anything of it.

Until Intuit’s Communications people came calling, that is.

But then I got a note from Rick Heineman, the chief communications officer at Intuit, who called the line of questioning and my tone “inappropriate,” “egregious,” and “disappointing” and demanded that we delete that entire section of the recording. I mean, literally — he wrote a long email that ended with “at the very least the end portion of your interview should be deleted.”

We don’t do that here at The Verge. As many of our listeners and readers know, we have a very explicit and very strict ethics policy. The most important thing to note is that we never allow anyone to preview or approve interview questions, and we certainly do not allow anyone to review or alter the work that we publish. I told this to Rick, and he came back and asked that we “delete that which takes away from the conversation,” which he defined as “raised voices” or us “speaking over each other,” so that “listeners understand your question and the answer Sasan gave.”

As the headline states, Patel declined to do any kind of deleting of any portion of the interview. But it’s actually much worse than that for Intuit. In true Streisand Effect fashion, The Verge not only ran the interview in its entirety, but it put just the portion Intuit wanted deleted at the forefront of the podcast and highlighting why it was doing so, asking listeners and readers to comment on whether they thought anything was inappropriate about the questions lobbed at Goodarzi. Go and listen for yourself. If you find any of it problematic, from the perspective of either Patel or Goodarzi, the problem is you, not the interview. It’s a pretty typical back and forth interview, and doesn’t even seem particularly contentious. As Patel notes:

I have to be honest with you — that’s one of the weirdest requests I’ve ever gotten. So here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to run that whole part of the interview first, unedited, so you can tell me. It’s about five minutes long, and you can decide for yourself. Then we’ll come out of it, and we’ll run the rest of the interview, which, like I said, is an otherwise fascinating episode of Decoder.

How in the world, in this year of our lord 2024, can there be someone in charge of communications for a company the size of Intuit who doesn’t understand that this was all inevitable the moment they tried to strongarm a journalist out of its journalism? Do they really not teach the Streisand Effect in colleges? Or teach journalism ethics to Communications majors?

Heineman had a brief stint in Minor League Baseball as a pitcher. And this is the Streisand Effect equivalent of throwing a meatball down the middle of the plate for The Verge to knock out of the park. Now the very thing that Heineman wanted to be deleted is getting more press coverage and exposure than it ever would have had Intuit not tried to bully a media outlet out of faithfully producing an interview that occurred.

Filed Under: free taxes, interview, nilay patel, rick heineman, sasan goodarzi, streisand effect, taxes
Companies: intuit, the verge

Taylor Morrison Fails To Get Disciplinary Action For Home Inspector That Posts Inspection Videos

from the swing-and-a-miss dept

Earlier this year, we discussed an example of the Streisand Effect in action when a large home builder, Taylor Morrison, petitioned the Arizona Board of Technical Registration to discipline Cy Porter, a home inspector who has built up a large online following by posting videos of his inspections. He does that to educate Arizona homebuyers to the need for having an inspection done specifically on newly constructed homes, as well as what inspectors need to look for to comply with Arizona code. Part of what was strange about the whole situation is that Porter and Taylor Morrison had had a relatively friendly conversation going for some time about some of the problems Porter was seeing in these homes, only for that conversation to be cut off later and for him to be barred from doing at least one inspection of a Taylor Morrison home.

Now, Taylor Morrison complained to the ABTR that Porter was targeting, harassing, and bullying the company, along with a claim that some of the content of his videos about any flaws in its homes was “falsified.” In addition to seeking to get him to stop posting videos, the company also asked that his license be temporarily suspended. This, of course, generated more news and headlines, leading even more people to be aware of the problems in these homes.

And now that’s going to get another round of coverage as this story appears to be coming to a close. That’s because the ABTR considered Taylor Morrison’s request and has found that the videos don’t contain any false information. As such, they are not suspending Porter’s license, and are merely issuing a “letter of concern” over his videos.

This week, the board held a hearing to discuss the complaint. The investigator assigned to the case stated after interviewing witnesses and homeowners who worked with Porter, and reviewing his posts, there was no evidence to show Porter lied in any of his videos.

Ultimately, the board did not discipline Porter after finding no violation of board statutes or rules.

Instead, the board voted to issue a letter of concern for unprofessional conduct. The letter specifically called out a video Porter posted in March. The board stated he displayed evidence in the video of a gas leak with an audio recording that was not associated with the leak. Porter defended that video and said the video was not showing a home inspection. Rather, it was satirical and made as a joke for his social media followers.

Now, to be clear, the board was not unanimous in its views. At least one did call for discipline, but that was out of concern for “professional behavior” rather than any lies expressed within the videos. And, honestly, the satire video is kind of dumb, too. If you’re going for an educational channel through which to inform the homebuying public around home inspections, doing a comedy bit in the middle of that channel seems like a poor choice.

But the real point in all of this is that Taylor Morrison is once again in the headlines, all because it tried to bully someone out of posting online videos of what appear to be legitimate concerns around the company’s homes. If the company had elected instead to act more human about all of this and, you know, just fix those problems, then its reputation wouldn’t have taken this sort of hit to begin with.

Filed Under: arizona, cy porter, home inspection, streisand effect
Companies: taylor morrison

Someone Tries To Bury Minecraft Movie Leak, Leading To Even More Interest In Those Leaks

from the paging-babs dept

As we’ve said before, it’s quite easy to understand why there would be frustration, or even anger, when leaks over entertainment media occur despite every attempt to keep that content under lock and key. This happens with movies all the time. What continues to amaze me are two things, however. First, that movie studios’ response to leaks like this is far too often ham-fisted legal attempts to disappear all leaked content and in some cases even go after those suspected of circulating said leaked content. Going after fans for leaking content about which they are excited is never a good look. Second, it doesn’t fucking work. There is a reason why the Streisand Effect has become a part of the parlance of entertainment law. It would be better if studios took our advice about how to respond to these leaks, which generally amounts to sharing in the excitement of fans while reminding them that they aren’t seeing anything like a finished product.

It appears that this lesson needs to be re-learned, as some group out there has responded to some fairly minor leaks for the forthcoming Minecraft movie by rerunning the same old playbook.

Images showing Jack Black as Minecraft character Steve have leaked online, giving the internet an early look at how the upcoming Warner Bros-backed Minecraft movie plans to stylise Mojang’s blocky world.

The designs, which reportedly first surfaced via notorious webforum 4chan, are now being pulled from social media platform X by copyright claims, Eurogamer has noticed. The takedowns all but confirm the images’ legitimacy.

Photos show a bearded Jack Black wearing Steve’s trademark blue shirt and jeans, holding a blocky pickaxe. Other images show a mossy-looking Creeper, cuboid bee and a rather cross-eyed pink sheep.

Okay, so let’s dive into what’s going on here, as the details matter. To start, I am presuming that it was Warner Bros. that is behind the takedowns of the leaked content, as they are the studio publishing the film. I have not been able to view any of the disappeared content in a form where it says it was taken down via a DMCA complaint with the responsible complainer listed. Instead, there is a whole bunch of 404 errors like this one, or Twitter accounts that are fully suspended. It could also be Mojang taking these actions, but I’d bet good money that it’s Warner Bros.

But while most of the posts on this topic have focused on the leak in terms of Jack Black starring as the game character Steve, there is roughly zero chance that’s the issue here. Jack Black himself put out some social media content months ago that he was going to be in the film as Steve. Instead, this is all probably a result of what are becoming criticized images and plot details that were part of the leak as well.

The comments in the Reddit thread that leaked the image (which has since been removed via copyright strike, essentially confirming its validity) were less than complimentary about the film’s prospects.

“This will be a movie”, dryly stated one commenter. Another commenter was a bit more on the nose with their assessment, saying that “this will be the worst movie of all time and I am SO ready to watch it”.

This has all the look and feel of the reveal of what Sonic would look like in the Sonic the Hedgehog movie from years ago. Which brings us right back to what Warner Bros. should have said about all of this: “Hey! We’re stoked that you all are so excited about this movie. We are too! However, what you’re seeing is not a finished product. We can’t wait for you to check this movie out when it’s in its completed form, because you’re going to love it!”

Instead, the takedowns were issued. Which has led to much more discussion about the leaked content, the exact opposite of what Warner Bros. would have wanted if it indeed did issue the takedowns. And that has led to the proliferation of that leaked content elsewhere, as a game of whac-a-mole ensues.

Warner Bros. should know better at this point. And, no, this isn’t a situation where a studio is using the Streisand Effect to promote their product. None of this is a good look for the movie.

Filed Under: copyright, jack black, leak, minecraft, movie, streisand effect
Companies: microsoft, warner bros.

from the paging-babs dept

Here we go again. The Streisand Effect has become so noticeably prevalent these days that I quite often hear the term being discussed in all manner of media. Hell, I came across it on a local Chicago sports radio broadcast a couple of weeks back. If the term and its implications aren’t being taught in business schools at this point, it almost certainly should be.

I say that because it seems there are still quite a few people out there who need the education. The latest unintentional student being educated is Taylor Morrison, a large homebuilder based in Arizona, but with development projects in 11 states. Taylor Morrison is attempting to get state regulators to take punitive action on Cy Porter, a home inspector who has built for himself with a decent social media following of his work.

Cy Porter of CyFy Home Inspections began posting videos of his home inspections on social media years ago. He shares footage from his inspections of new builds in Arizona.

“My number one focus is I want everyone to understand new builds need inspections just as much as any other home,” Porter said. “They don’t just need inspection. They need someone to find all the issues that violate Arizona state standards or that go against the [Registrar of Contractors], which is the builders’ governing board.”

His videos caught the attention of Taylor Morrison, one of the biggest home construction companies in the country. Porter conducts inspections of homes built by all companies, including Taylor Morrison.

And here’s where it gets weird. It was Porter that first reached out to Taylor Morrison when he discovered some issues at one of their home developments. From there, the company responded to him and, for a period of time, the two sides had a dialogue going that seemed amicable. Then, for one reason or another, Porter was prevented from doing a home inspection on a Taylor Morrison home. He made one of his social media videos about the episode, and suddenly the interaction he was having with the company changed. And then, well…

In April, Taylor Morrison filed a complaint against him with the Arizona Board of Technical Registration which regulates home inspectors.

The complaint alleges unprofessional conduct.

“Taylor Morrison would like Cyril Porter, on behalf of himself and his companies, to stop posting any videos to social media about Taylor Morrison,” the complaint reads. The complaint continues to request past videos be removed and for Porter to be disciplined for “harassing, falsified, and bullying” social media posts. It also claims Porter has made inappropriate comments to “female professionals” and questions his endorsement deals done on social media.

Now, Porter has stated he thinks the complaint was only filed due to the negative nature of his most recent video about Taylor Morrison. And, frankly, I agree with him. All of this seems to have been triggered by that last video. Most of what Taylor Morrison is complaining about existed while the two sides were having more friendly conversations.

Now, surely Taylor Morrison was attempting to use this complaint to intimidate Porter into taking his videos about the company down out of fear. Were that indeed the goal, however, it seems to have backfired in true Streisand Effect Fashion. For starters, Porter is not taking any videos down, nor is he ceasing to put new videos up. He has said he has work booked out for longer than the next calendar year and he isn’t going to change a thing about his social media presence.

And, of course, here we all are talking in a much wider and broader way about Taylor Morrison in a negative way and in a way that brings even more attention to Porter’s videos. I wonder just how many more views those videos about Taylor Morrison have gotten since the complain was filed. I don’t know the answer as of this writing, but I am certain that the answer is not “zero.”

So enjoy all the extra attention you are getting by trying to silence some online criticism, Taylor Morrison. Here, as they say, endeth the lesson.

Filed Under: cy porter, home inspections, social media, streisand effect
Companies: taylor morrison

Australia’s Richest Woman Discovers The Streisand Effect In Trying To Remove Portrait She Disliked

from the a-good-old-fashioned-streisanding dept

I wonder if Gina Rinehart, an Australian mining magnate, is a fan of Barbra Streisand?

It’s been a bit since we had a straight-up classic Streisand Effect story like the good old days, where someone powerful saw something they didn’t like and insisted that it must be disappeared because they didn’t like it.

Meet Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest woman.

Apparently, she didn’t like a portrait of her done by the artist Vincent Namatjira that was hanging at the National Gallery of Australia. Namatjira is an interesting artist, who is known for works that “both skewer and honour their subjects” according to a Guardian profile of him from last year.

And, yeah, you could say that’s the case with his portrait of Rinehart.

I wouldn’t exactly call it flattering, but who knows. My tastes in art may differ from yours.

But, of course, the ability to skewer the powerful and mock them is an important part of a free society. The rich and powerful already can get away with so much nonsense, one of the only tools left to keep them slightly in check is public mockery and criticism.

And the thing is, most people would have looked at it and moved on without much of a thought (maybe with a chuckle), and that would have been that.

But, no, Rinehart is rich and if someone who is rich sees something they dislike, “something must be done.” In this case, that something was to demand the removal of the painting.

The mining billionaire Gina Rinehart has demanded the National Gallery of Australia remove her portrait from an exhibition by the award-winning artist Vincent Namatjira.

The image, arguably an unflattering picture of Australia’s richest woman, is one of many portraits unveiled at the Canberra gallery as part of the Archibald prize-winning artist’s first major survey exhibition.

The National Gallery has rebuffed efforts to have the picture taken down and said in a statement that it welcomed public dialogue on its collection and displays.

Take a wild guess what happened next?

Yup. You got it. This portrait that few people would have known about became national news.

If Gina Rinehart was trying to make sure no one saw a portrait of her, recent moves have had the opposite effect.

Last week, media – including Guardian Australia – reported that Australia’s richest woman had demanded the National Gallery of Australia remove a portrait of her. The painting by the artist Vincent Namatjira is one of numerous portraits on display at the Canberra gallery in Namatjira’s first major survey exhibition.

The Guardian even rightly tagged it as the latest example of the Streisand Effect in action:

Rinehart appears to have fallen victim to the “Streisand effect”, a term coined after Barbra Streisand launched a lawsuit in 2003 to try to remove an aerial photo of her California beach house from an online collection. Streisand’s attempt to suppress the image led to almost half a million people visiting the Pictopia site to view the photo within a month.

A similar thing seems to have happened with Rinehart. The NGA told Guardian Australia in a statement that there had been a “noticeable increase” in visitors to the national gallery as well as its digital channels over the past week.

Google trends has also given us a sweeping indicator of the worldwide gain in traction of the search term “Gina Rinehart”.

Before 15 May – the day the first stories about Rinehart’s portrait demand was published – interest in Rinehart on Google was at roughly 0, meaning there was not enough search data on the term.

But after the news broke, search interest picked up, with “Gina Rinehart” hitting peak popularity two days later.

A week later, interest lingered.

Who would have predicted that… other than just about everyone familiar with how these things go.

Look, being rich comes with all sorts of privileges. But one thing it should not come with is the ability to go through life without having to deal with an occasional bit of mockery pointed in your direction. But, when that happens, there are a variety of ways to deal with it, and Rinehart appears to have chosen the absolute worst.

Filed Under: australia, gina rinehart, portrait, streisand effect, vincent namatjira

BrewDog Wants To Keep Streisanding A Critical Documentary Into The Public View

from the in-the-doghouse dept

Full disclosure as a matter of throat-clearing: I generally like BrewDog, a brewery based in the UK. Between really enjoying their beer in the past and the fact that the company underwent a concerted effort to change its previously draconian stance on IP issues, the company has just generally rubbed me the right way, so to speak.

But that doesn’t mean that the company isn’t capable of doing the stupid on occasion. And engaging in a prolonged battle with the BBC over a documentary that was critical of BrewDog management is certainly doing the stupid.

The documentary focused on BrewDog’s marketing strategy and commercial practices in the context of its corporate culture. The program aired in 2022 and included several accounts of Watt’s alleged misconduct toward female employees and accounts of a toxic work culture. Many people found the details about the BrewDog CEO’s investments in Heinken rather hypocritical considering Watt’s supposed negative stance toward big beer and the brand’s identity being tied to “punk.”

So, not flattering, obviously, but certainly also not the sort of thing that a company couldn’t weather. In fact, this comment from a BrewDog spokesperson is quite good.

“The BBC still needs to explain why it lied about using a proven fraudster as a key source, before being forced to admit the truth when presented with evidence to the contrary.

“Since this program aired, BrewDog has created nearly 1000 jobs, opened many bars in some of the toughest trading conditions ever and been included in the Sunday Times Best Places to Work as well as named a Top Employer by the Top Employer Institute.”

And if all of that is valid, it would be an appropriate response to the documentary. In fact, that’s exactly the sort of thing a spokesperson is useful for.

But what I’ve left out of all of this is that this has all been made bigger news as a result of BrewDog taking its complaints not only to the press via a press release, but also to the Office of Communications in the UK (Ofcom), where it lodged a complaint for unfair treatment and invasion of privacy. The unfair treatment revolves around BrewDog’s claims that it was not fairly represented in the documentary. The invasion of privacy has to do with content within the documentary as to how Watt’s handled his own investments.

And it’s now back in the news because Ofcom decided that those complaints were not valid.

A complaint was made to Ofcom that BrewDog and Mr Watt (“the complainants”) were treated unjustly or unfairly in the programme as broadcast, and that Mr Watt’s privacy was unwarrantably infringed in both the obtaining and broadcast of material included in the programme relating to his personal investments.

Ofcom’s decision is that material facts were not presented, disregarded or omitted in a way that was unfair to the complainants, that they had an appropriate and timely opportunity to respond to the allegations made in the programme, and that their response was fairly reflected in the programme.

Ofcom also considered that Mr Watt had a legitimate expectation of privacy with regard to the obtaining and subsequent broadcast of material concerning Mr Watt’s personal investments. However, Mr Watt’s legitimate expectation of privacy did not, on balance, outweigh the broadcaster’s right to freedom of expression and the public interest in obtaining and including the material in the programme. Therefore, there was no unwarranted infringement of Mr Watt’s privacy in connection with the obtaining and subsequent broadcast of the material included in the programme.

And with that, you can see that the only prize BrewDog has received for its valiant attempt to go legal over a documentary filled with protected speech is having that documentary cycled through the news years after it first aired while getting a public pantsing by Ofcom that lends that documentary even more credibility.

At this point, BrewDog’s act of contrition should be to make a limited release beer branded as Brewstrand Effect.

Filed Under: documentary, free speech, invasion of privacy, ofcom, streisand effect
Companies: brewdog

Maybe Your Lawyers Shouldn’t Tell Reporters You Did Not Engage In ‘Conspiracy To Or Complicity In Murder’ When No One Was Claiming Otherwise

from the get-better-lawyers? dept

Sometimes my “I have not participated in any conspiracy to or complicity in murder” t-shirt raises a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.

Remember Rajat Khare? He’s the guy associated with Appin Technologies in India, and there’s a pattern of stories mentioning his name suddenly disappearing (or his name disappearing from them) after his various lawyers get involved. Could be a coincidence. Might not be.

We had written about Appin successfully getting an Indian court to order Reuters and Google to remove a story about Appin last year based on a preliminary court ruling. Then we received a bunch of emails from Appin demanding we remove our article. A few weeks ago, we (with help from EFF) told Appin that we were under no obligation to do so.

Reporter Andy Greenberg at Wired wrote about all of this the day we released our response. Now, a couple of weeks later, Wired has updated their story to note that Khare’s lawyers had contacted them two weeks after the story had gone up (despite Greenberg having reached out to Appin and receiving no response) to complain about not having been asked for comment, calling Wired’s story defamatory, and demanding a retraction.

There was something else too:

Neither Appin Training Centers nor Rajat Khare responded to WIRED’s request for comment. However, two weeks after this story was initially published, lawyers from the firm Clare Locke sent a letter to WIRED on Khare’s behalf, calling this story defamatory and demanding a retraction. WIRED stands by its reporting. The letter claimed that WIRED did not reach out to Khare for comment, which is false. It demanded that WIRED include a statement from Khare, which we’ve added as an update below. In addition, it denied that Khare had participated in any “conspiracy to or complicity in murder”—an allegation that was not made in this article.

So, noted.

Filed Under: andy greenberg, rajat khare, streisand effect, threats
Companies: appin

Cornices Centre Goes For The Streisand Effect Multiplier Over ‘Near Miss’ Bike Video

from the keep-digging dept

Earlier this year, we discussed a frustrating story regarding one company in the UK, Cornices Centre, threatening a cyclist over a YouTube video showing what purports to be a near miss by a truck with the company’s name and logo on it. Those threats centered on a very confused understanding of trademark law, such that the company thought it could demand the YouTube video be taken down by claiming that the appearance of the branding in the video somehow equates to trademark infringement. That obviously is not how trademark law works and the company eventually rescinded that threat for the time being. I concluded that post with the following:

And that isn’t the only Streisand vector by which this story is getting much more attention than its initial 400 views. Legal commentators are doing their own videos and posts on the subject, including this one. What was a couple of hundred views of an incident has instead turned into thousands and thousands of views, as well as potential legal action against the company from the cyclist.

It’s probably time to get that apology out post-haste, Cornices Centre!

Cornices Centre did not take my advice. Instead, the company has apparently decided to go for some kind of Streisand Effect multiplier by now going after some of those legal commentators speaking on the story that I mentioned above.

Daniel ShenSmith, who posts legal advice on his BlackBeltBarrister YouTube channel(link is external), says the company has made “veiled threats” concerning his conduct as a barrister in a letter, and called on the lawyer to remove a video in which he criticised the motorist’s driving and the company’s “ridiculous” claim that the cyclist’s close pass clip breached trademark infringement.

In a video posted on his YouTube channel this weekend(link is external), ShenSmith also revealed that the company has threatened him over his response to their initial complaint, calling on him to remove the video in which he criticises both the driver’s actions and the firm’s trademark infringement claim, a move he describes as “out of order” and designed to quell public criticism of the company.

That design is not going to work. Just as with the initial attempt to bury criticism against the company by threatening the cyclist, which ballooned what was a 400-view video into one with tens of thousands of views, all this bullying behavior does is keep the negative news about the company circulating. Now the barrister is commenting on the situation more. Other news outlets, such as us, are talking about this more. All this is doing is pushing the story about the company’s actions, and the driver in the video, further into circulation.

And, frankly, engaging in all of this behavior and directing it to a lawyer is probably not the best of plans.

“I’m not going to take the video down, because there is no legal basis at all that would require me to take it down. My video was of public interest, because it was a driver driving badly, who was caught by a cyclist, and ultimately prosecuted. I was giving my opinion on the driving in the video as a barrister and it turns out I was right, as he was prosecuted.

“Facts are facts, the roads are safer, and the general public are now more informed and less likely to be bullied.”

For the love of god, Cornices Centre, stop digging! You’re already in a hole!

Filed Under: daniel shensmith, overreaction, streisand effect, threats, trademark, uk
Companies: cornices centre

Sorry Appin, We’re Not Taking Down Our Article About Your Attempts To Silence Reporters

from the we-stand-by-our-reporting dept

Back in December, we wrote about Appin. We were not writing about the reports (of which there have been many) that the organization that started as a sort of cybersecurity training school, but morphed into a kind of “hack-for-hire” scheme was involved in all sorts of nefarious activity. Rather we wrote about their (ab)use of the Indian court system to order Reuters to remove a big, detailed, investigative report on the company.

The history of Appin, and reporting on its involvement in hacking schemes, goes back a over a decade. Reports of Appin trying to hide and suppress such stories is a bit shorter but are abundant. And Appin has, at times, been quite successful, especially in trying to remove the name of the guy regularly accused of being behind Appin, Rajat Khare. See this SwissInfo report on how Qatar “spied on the world of football,” which was forced to remove Khare’s name while leaving in Appin’s.

Or how about the Bureau of Investigative Journalism story published in 2022, Inside the Global Hack-for-Hire Industry. An earlier version of that report names Khare. In April of 2023, the article was updated, and all mentions of Khare disappeared. There are many more examples as well.

Back in December, the Daily Beast finally had an article entitled “Who is Killing all These Stories About a Controversial Tech Mogul?” highlighting how stories about Khare and Appin have a noticeable history of suddenly disappearing.

In a move that has press freedom campaigners troubled, Rajat Khare, co-founder of Appin, an India-based tech company, has used a variety of law firms in a number of different jurisdictions to threaten these U.S., British, Swiss, Indian, and French-language media organizations.

On Nov. 16, Reuters published a special investigation under the headline “How an Indian startup hacked the world,” detailing how Appin allegedly became a “hack for hire powerhouse that stole secrets from executives, politicians, military officials and wealthy elites around the globe”—a claim that Khare strongly denies. Khare retained the powerhouse “media assassin” firm Clare Locke LLP, which boasts on its website about “killing stories,” to send Reuters several legal threats over the past year about the story, according to two people familiar with the matter.

After the removal of the Reuters story, which at least involved an actual court order, others appeared to be bullied into submission as well. Perhaps most shockingly, Lawfare (who, of anyone, should understand how ridiculous this is) redacted their version of the story about Reuters pulling down its article, saying that they did so after receiving “a letter notifying us that the Reuters story summarized in this article had been taken down pursuant to court order in response to allegations that it is false and defamatory. The letter demanded that we retract this post as well.” And they did so, despite no legal basis:

Unsurprisingly, we also received similar demands. We received multiple emails claiming to represent “Association of Appin Training Centers” legal department, and claiming (falsely) that by quoting the Reuters article (which we did not even do) we were also liable for violating the court order. Similar demands were also sent to our CDN provider, our domain registrar, and the domain registry.

The only thing we quoted from Reuters was their announcement about the removal — not from the original article. The other parts we quoted were from SentinelOne, the security research firm that Reuters used to analyze the data. At the time we wrote the article, SentinelOne’s report remained online (it, too, has since been removed “in light of a pending court order … out of an abundance of caution”).

In the meantime, though, all these attempts to pull down and hide the content appears to be causing a bit of a Streisand Effect. Beyond the Daily Beast article calling out the campaign, the website Distributed Denial of Secrets decided to republish the Reuters piece as part of its new “Greenhouse” project, noting:

In response to the unacceptable censorship by Appin and the Indian courts, Distributed Denial of Secrets is launching a new initiative to combat censorship: the Greenhouse Project. The Greenhouse Project continues DDoSecrets’ mission of ensuring the free transmission of data in the public interest by making the ‘publisher of last resort’ concept proposed by George Buchanan in 2007 a reality. By ensuring the reporting and source files are preserved, the Greenhouse Project builds on previous efforts creating a “warming effect” to reverse the chilling effects of censorship.

In addition, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Politico, and Columbia Journalism Review have all run stories on Appin’s attempt to silence reporters. And, of course, all of this just keeps bringing more and more attention to the underlying claims about Khare and Appin. If Khare disputes those claims he could respond to them and refute them directly. Instead, he appears to be continuing a campaign of legal threats and dubious legal filings to seek to scare off reporters.

A few weeks back, we found out that our friends at Muckrock, the operators of DocumentCloud, had also received similar threats regarding documents hosted on that site.

Earlier this week, EFF sent a letter to the Association of Appin Training Centers, on behalf of both us and Muckrock, pointing out that the arguments they made in their letters to both of us did not appear to match what was in the actual court filing, which (1) does not clearly establish that the articles were defamatory based on the full evidence and a complete defense by Reuters, and (2) very clearly only apply to Reuters and Google. Furthermore, the letter points out that we are protected by the First Amendment, and any move to enforce a foreign order that violates the First Amendment would be barred under the SPEECH Act.

You can find Muckrock’s article about this here. Andy Greenberg, at Wired, also has a story about this.

This kind of censorial bullying may work on other publications, but Techdirt believes that (1) important stories, especially around surveillance and hacking, deserve to be read and (2) it’s vitally important to call it out publicly when operations like Appin seek to silence reporting, especially when it’s done through abusing the legal process to silence and intimidate journalists and news organizations.

We want to thank David Greene and Aaron Mackey at EFF for their help with this.

To the Association of Appin Training Centers:

We represent and write on behalf of Techdirt and MuckRock Foundation (which runs the DocumentCloud hosting services), each of which received correspondence from you making certain assertions about the legal significance of an interim court order in the matter of Vinay Pandey v. Raphael Satter & Ors. Please direct any future correspondence about this matter to us.

We are concerned with two issues you raise in your correspondence.

First, you refer to the Reuters article as containing defamatory materials as determined by the court. However, the court’s order by its very terms is an interim order, that the defendants’ evidence has not yet been considered, and that a final determination of the defamatory character of the article has not been made. The order itself states ‘this is only a prima-facie opinion and the defendants shall have sufficient opportunity to express their views through reply, contest in the main suit etc. and the final decision shall be taken subsequently.

Second, you assert that reporting by others of the disputed statements made in the Reuters article ‘which itself is a violation of an Indian Court Order, thereby making you also liable under Contempt of Courts Act, 1971.’ But, again by its plain terms, the court’s interim order applies only to Reuters and to Google. The order does not require any other person or entity to depublish their articles or other pertinent materials. And the order does not address its effect on those outside the jurisdiction of Indian courts. The order is in no way the global takedown order your correspondence represents it to be. Moreover, both Techdirt and MuckRock Foundation are U.S. entities. Thus, even if the court’s order could apply beyond the parties named within it, it will be unenforceable in U.S. courts to the extent it and Indian defamation law is inconsistent with the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and 47 U.S.C. § 230, pursuant to the SPEECH Act, 28 U.S.C. § 4102. Since the First Amendment would not permit an interim depublication order in a defamation case, the Pandey order is unenforceable.

If you disagree, please provide us with legal authority so we can assess those arguments. Unless we hear from you otherwise, we will assume that you concede that the order binds only Reuters and Google and that you will cease asserting otherwise to our clients or to anyone else.
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David Greene Civil Liberties Director/Senior Staff Attorney Electronic Frontier Foundation

Filed Under: 1st amendment, censorship, free speech, hack for hire, india, rajat khare, streisand effect
Companies: appin, muckrock, techdirt