National Sovereignty and Free Expression

Cory Doctorow's latest LOCUS column explores the tension between the rights of nations to "establish the rule of law" and individuals' rights to freedom of expression.

Hard Cases, Bad Law

Some nations use the power of their sovereignty to protect individual rights, while some do the opposite. The internet comes into the discussion because it "crosses international borders." Currently the United Nations is working on a Cybercrime Treaty, intended to prevent "ransomware attacks and other serious crimes." The problem is that the treaty will leave it up to each country to define "cybercrime" within its borders. A dictatorship might well define it as any public criticism of the regime. Or, for example, weaponize it against a dating site that permits same-sex matches.

The essay also discusses "data localization" laws, enacted by the EU member nations and some other European countries. Beneficial effects include preventing data about internet users within these countries from being accessed by the NSA's global surveillance. A less benign provision, however, "allows sovereign nations to access and use the data stored within their borders," a power obviously vulnerable to abuse by countries such as Russia.

Encryption presents another dilemma rooted in the clash between sovereignty and individual rights. Governments would like to ban highly effective "working encryption," at least to the extent of mandating a back-door feature for investigation of criminal activity. The trouble is that it's impossible to create such encryption to allow action prosecution of criminals while still protecting the data of legitimate users. Laying out the procedures that would be required to implement the kind of restrictions authorities might like, Doctorow concludes "the collateral damage to human rights from this kind of ban are gigantic."

The essay goes into considerable detail about these and other related issues of interest to anyone devoted to freedom of speech. Conclusion -- in irreconcilable clashes between national sovereignty and human rights, the latter should rule, and "we can recognize the legitimate exercise of sovereignty without using that as a pretense to ignore when sovereign power is used to undermine free expression, especially when that use is likely to kick off a cascade of ever-more-extreme measures that are progressively worse for free expression."

Margaret L. Carter

Pease explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

The Long Arm Of The Law (GDPR in this case)

It's getting harder for writers.

First, here come this author's protestations of virtue. We don't track you, and we don't store your information (knowingly), but perhaps our glorious host (Google) does so. That's this blog's Privacy Policy.

European friends who visit aliendjinnromances via ".... .blogspot.co.uk" or via ".... .blogspot.fr"  for instance will see a notice such as this:

"This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services, to personalize ads and to analyze traffic. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies."

This notice doesn't load immediately, but when it does so, it is like a header, with white font on a grey background link, and it might go away if you click "LEARN MORE" or "GOT IT".

If you receive the articles from this blog through your email, (thank you!), it is because you must have affirmatively and actively signed up, or followed, or subscribed.  As far as this author knows, there is no way for the contributors to add subscribers without their consent, nor is there a database that the contributors to this blog can access to discover what data (if any) the Google cookies have "harvested".

Moreover, this blog is not monetized.  Google doesn't pay us, so Google does not (or should not) be placing  third party advertisements on this particular site. Nor does Twitter pay us, nor Facebook for that matter.

Authors, even if you are in the USA, you are affected by the GDPR if any of your newsletter recipients live in Europe.

As of May 25th, 2018, authors who have newsletters may need to double-verify that newsletter recipients have affirmatively and intentionally agreed to receive those newsletters. Any author who built up a newsletter list by participating in Romance Site contests, and adding eager contestants' names and email addresses to their list if the contestant checked the "Yes (subscribe me)" box, may have to make sure the recipients actively agree to remain on the list.... or actively make sure that recipients clearly understand how to be completely unsubscribed and their information deleted.

No doubt, in the past, many readers who wanted to win a free book or gift card believed that, no matter what the contest rules stated (if there were published rules), their chances of winning the goodies in the contest would be improved if they clicked the "Yes" box.  That is not necessarily "freely given" consent.

It may also not be exactly "freely given" if signing up for a mailing list is a condition of receiving a free ebook, and everyone who signs up does in fact receive the free book. Any free gift should be separate and distinct from checking a box to sign up for marketing newsletters from the author.

Here is a very entertaining podcast discussion of everything all authors need to know about the impending GDPR, from author Mark Dawson, with advice from Gemma Gibbs, and a great discussion about authors' websites' landing pages.

https://selfpublishingformula.com/episode-117/

They offer a link to an information sheet, but the very honorable authors stress that recipients of this info sheet will be subscribed to their mailing list.

http://selfpublishingformula.com/GDPR

https://selfpublishingformula.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Ep-117-GDPR.pdf

The most important takeaway:
Every email from an author to a newsletter audience absolutely must contain an Unsubscribe link, without exception.

Also helpful, readable, and apparently without strings, Nicole R. Locker of RomanceBooks.Blog offers a cheat sheet for authors.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iEuxES2mvsBmn7XNoSwXtKz9gThuelpDqUepAAu4eXI/edit

All the best,

Rowena Cherry

PS.  I meant to include this link from Joseph J. Lazzarotti  and  Mary Costigan,  legal bloggers for Jackson Lewis PC who ask "Does The GDPR Apply To Your U-S Based Company?"
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3a02f14c-828b-47ba-bb91-cbddb41bbce3

You are advised to be compliant!

Data And Betrayal

Take international, data-related tit-for-tat.

Microsoft allegedly argues that, if the Supreme Court of the United States (S.C.O.T.U.S.) decides that the US Department of Justice (D.O.J.) can --unilaterally-- use a search warrant to seize emails that are stored on foreign servers that are outside the USA, will that mean that foreign governments--any foreign governments, including China, Russia, North Korea-- can unilaterally seize emails stored on US servers inside the USA?

For more information, read "Do search warrants have extraterritorial effect", penned by legal blogger Andrew Smith for Corker Binning of the UK.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5940f95e-1a9f-42a3-8879-f9483cc6a612

If copyleftists are to be believed, everything one writes is "data" or "information"... and (snort) "information wants to be free".  Unfortunately, as in George Orwell's "Animal Farm" all (metaphorical) animals are equal but some are more equal than others.

Some information is expected to be free when you give it up, but not so much if you want it back.

The brilliant and businesslike Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes a wide ranging cautionary tale of promises made and apparently broken, of confidentiality and access to ones own analyzed data.

https://kriswrites.com/2018/02/07/business-musings-confidential-business-information/

There's a moral: keep your business secrets secret.

Talking of giving away "data", or having it taken from one without one's consent, this writer is reminded of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot. How many mothers, I wonder, who wish to harvest their cord blood for freezing, discover that the hospital appropriates (without permission) a quantity of cord blood for their own research and rations the amount that the patient may have... of her own cord blood?

Does anyone else wonder about the information one freely gives, or even pays to give to Ancestry.com or 23-and-me?  Could one's spit come back to bite one? If the government secretly does the same with the DNA held by the spit-analyzing services as it does with the location data held by smart phone companies, well, what a brave new world we live in. 


From Germany, business writers Hans-Edzard Busemann and Nadine Schimrozik discuss a Berlin regional court's opinion of some Facebook tricky settings and use of personal data.

https://www.investing.com/news/technology-news/german-court-rules-facebook-use-of-personal-data-illegal-1230837

There's a lot of "permissionless innovation" about, and an assumption by the Big Data guys that everyone knows -- just because they live and breathe-- what Big Data is doing (an unreasonable assumption, if you ask me), and that it is perfectly fine to assume that everyone is okay with their data being exploited unless they proactively opt out.  So certain permissions are pre-checked in "Settings", and a user (or a non-user) has to find those settings and actively change them. Who has time?

It is all too easy for advertisers to stalk us, spy on us, and harass us, and even to force us to pay (if one has a pay-per-minute telephone plan... or if one buys ones own paper and toner for ones faxes) to receive their pitches. I'm not okay with that.

On the other side of the coin, Facebook may not be all that friendly to those who advertise, either.

Michael Alvear (an interesting man who claims that he got bored stiff writing a sex advice column) looks into
"Facebook's Epic Fail" as a source of a good return on investment for writers to advertise.

http://writingforaliving.us/results-facebook-advertising-survey-authors/

Maybe, if an author is paying $0.40 per click, and the royalty he receives on an book sale is $0.40 or less,
it's not a business model that will work for most.... but one should read Alvear's advice in full.

Facebook is also in the Lexology news for illegality in its "mean clicques groups". One would think that there would be nothing wrong with forming an intimate group to revile ones lower ranking co-workers, right? Wrong.

Legal blogger David J. Pryzbylski, writing for Barnes and Thornburg LLP gives the legal lowdown on a team of local lovelies who set up a supposedly secret and exclusive Facebook group, and excluded some of their team members, thereby violating the National Labor Relations Act.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=a1693e57-2c39-4934-a981-28e9c1926cca

Should one infer that the teamsters did not know what the Germans know about Facebook's default settings?

On a final note... a musical one, and nothing (much) to do with Facebook or privacy... but pertaining to betrayal and restoring fairness, if you will: please support The Classics Act.

Musicians and their heirs have been cheated out of royalties for years, simply because of a loophole in the law that allowed big business to not pay royalties to the copyright owners of music released before 1972.
How is it fair that the creators of a musical work from 1971 get nothing from Sirius and its like, while creators of a similar musical work released in 1973 get paid?

There's a petition. http://musicfirstcoalition.org/action-center/support-the-classics-act/
If you live in the USA, and provide your zip code etc it will go to your Congressmen and Congresswomen.

Thank you.
All the best,
Rowena Cherry