German police are more data hungry than meets the eye. And they want to keep it that way.
Without the hard work of "all things digital rights" web site netzpolitik.org, residents of the quaint country in the heart of Europe would remain unaware of the proclivities of their lads and ladies in blue (mostly blue, other colors may apply).
For example, last October we wrote about the odd "force protection" databases many of the country's agencies are quietly feeding.
Just yesterday, netzpolitik reported on the investigation by an intrepid German reporter into another set of databases: on soccer fans. As it turns out, a database that came to light in Berlin a year ago is far from unique.
Police across the country access not just a known nation wide database but have additional repositories of their own.
Violence does happen at soccer matches, so nobody is surprised that police collect related data. To ensure the public understands this, the databases are called "Sports Violence Databases".
But they are not limited to persons sentenced for violence or investigated for suspicion of violent behavior at sports events. When state politicians made formal inquires - after police refused journalists' FOIA requests - it became clear that people who have never had a run in with police end up in these databases, too.
And, just as with the "force protection" databases, getting in is easy, getting out is hard. Not least because the majority of the databases have been unknown even to the state data protection commissioners, whose mandate includes keeping an eye on government databases.
Oversight powers are so weak that it is already considered a success when the retention period is shortened from five years to three years.
To the blogster, the best indication of pervasive disregard for transparency it that agencies routinely refuse to disclose the structure of a database, declaring that publishing it would endanger security.
Anybody who has ever dealt professionally with databases will confirm that such a statement by police may be true under one condition: if the designers of a database are utterly incompetent.
At the state level, this might not even be very far off the truth.
We do know that Germany has true nerds, the main programmer of a widely used pgp encryption software hails from near Cologne Germany. And in an article on Germany's federal IT security agency, the blogster saw one employee described as a young man wearing glasses held together by tape - if this doesn't say nerd, nothing does.
In reality, German governments have always been big on "security through obscurity", and this won't change anytime soon.
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Wednesday, March 30, 2016
Casual racism New York cab driver style
This post was initiated by the misfiring of a few synapses after finding out that the NYPD has at least five undercover "Cop Cabs".
Boys will be boys.
And that brought back the memories of the blogster's last cab ride in fabulously diverse and welcoming New York City, New York. Well, Manhattan.
Having successfully hailed and boarded with its* company, we enjoyed a leisurely, if somewhat bumpy ride through Gotham's numbered streets. Always curious, at time noticeably perceived as obnoxious by the other party, we asked the driver where he was from.
The question is well intentioned and also kind of a game to see if an assumption holds true. The assumption in this case was Pakistan.
Pakistan, was the single word answer.
That was the extent of the conversation. The driver checked in with the dispatcher over the radio as we took in the sights and smells.
Getting close to our destination, the Port Authority, on this early evening, we started counting our cash as the driver talked to dispatch.
I'm almost at the Port Authority. Yes, I'm available. I'll take a break at nine.
He stopped, told us how much we owed him, and we paid and gave him a tip. We got out and walked around the back of the car, then turned towards the front to head to the entrance.
A tall black man in his late thirties, early forties, dressed exceedingly well in a good business suit - unlike us jeans and such peeps - told the driver his destination through the open car window.
We heard: I'm not in service as the roof light turned forbidding red.
The black males shook his head.
He knew the drill.
* Gender neutral editing, folks, it's a thing.
Boys will be boys.
And that brought back the memories of the blogster's last cab ride in fabulously diverse and welcoming New York City, New York. Well, Manhattan.
Having successfully hailed and boarded with its* company, we enjoyed a leisurely, if somewhat bumpy ride through Gotham's numbered streets. Always curious, at time noticeably perceived as obnoxious by the other party, we asked the driver where he was from.
The question is well intentioned and also kind of a game to see if an assumption holds true. The assumption in this case was Pakistan.
Pakistan, was the single word answer.
That was the extent of the conversation. The driver checked in with the dispatcher over the radio as we took in the sights and smells.
Getting close to our destination, the Port Authority, on this early evening, we started counting our cash as the driver talked to dispatch.
I'm almost at the Port Authority. Yes, I'm available. I'll take a break at nine.
He stopped, told us how much we owed him, and we paid and gave him a tip. We got out and walked around the back of the car, then turned towards the front to head to the entrance.
A tall black man in his late thirties, early forties, dressed exceedingly well in a good business suit - unlike us jeans and such peeps - told the driver his destination through the open car window.
We heard: I'm not in service as the roof light turned forbidding red.
The black males shook his head.
He knew the drill.
* Gender neutral editing, folks, it's a thing.
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Bend common and uncommon file formats for camouflaging/hiding data
If you have not been living under a rock or a bricked computer, tablet, or smartphone, you have heard and read about data encryption more than you may have wanted.
So, the blogster decided to come back to a different favorite: how to hide data and some psychological aspects that can improve hiding data.
No, the topic is not new at all. This is just one of many articles that says it: Data hiding has been with us as long as there have been digital computers and networks. The author of the 2007 article considers the practice as a threat, saying In a sense, we've been living in a fool's paradise because today's crooks and criminals seldom take extraordinary measures to conceal data. Most of the forensics work in law enforcement that I'm aware of involves very basic data recovery techniques with a few popular forensics tools.
Others have a different view and study the subject with the aim of improving network processing and security, for example this one from the University of Toronto.
This post describes practical ways and tools to hide data at rest, in other words, data that sit on a device. Things like banking details, passwords, or files you want to keep private.
It is called steganography, and is literally the oldest trick in the book. Here is a list of great free tools. They hide data in image files or audio files, some tools come with added encryption.
They are all you need if you are a normal computer user.
For the more adventurous among you, another tool out of the basement of the K-Landnews is available here as an executable package and with the full source code. It supports the standard image file storage as well as homemade .wav audio.
More interesting, though, are other formats. Some are "beta" or somewhat experimental, others stable. See the section of supported output file formats at the end of the post.
Psychological aspects of hiding data:
1) Playing with cultural stereotypes and taboos, a light hearted description is in the older post Staganography -- hiding text in nudie pics
On a more serious note, childrens' drawings are likely to score high on the "not interesting" index, unless your kid is a prodigy.
2) Scare a snooper
The output file list at the end of the post has an entry "Java .jar file". To a snooper, this looks like an executable file, a program. Our implementation is simplistic, it merely replaces the content of a standard main.class file of Java executable jar with the scrambled message. But, to a snooper, a Java executable won't look as interesting as a text file and he or she will initially treat it as an unknown executable. Other executable formats would even be more formidable, say you wrote a C/C++ program with pernicious code to crash the operating system and hide your message somewhere in the executable.
3) Use formats from your work or something related to your hobbies. Yes, Item 1 can be a hobby, but that's not what we mean.
The sample formats "DNA sequence" and "empty xml file" are meant as examples for work/hobby related steganography. If you are a biologist, some "DNA txt files" on your device will look perfectly natural.
If you are an English teacher, put the data into the "empty xml" and add a public domain book or poem from Project Gutenberg. Again, a folder with "nothing" but Mark Twain books or some random English romantic poet's deeds provide good cover.
Suggestions for other professions:
If you are an engineer, extend the tool, write some output files based on standard formats from your daily work. How about a fake electronics component wiring diagram or some ChemDoodle Web drawings with a custom reader?
If you are a musician, use "note xml" or use standard musical notation with a customized optical character recognition module - similar to but more elaborate than the sample "hieroglyphs .png" implementation of the K-Landnews stego tool.
Computer games should be a fun container, too. You can make people play a game in order to reassemble data.
So, the blogster decided to come back to a different favorite: how to hide data and some psychological aspects that can improve hiding data.
No, the topic is not new at all. This is just one of many articles that says it: Data hiding has been with us as long as there have been digital computers and networks. The author of the 2007 article considers the practice as a threat, saying In a sense, we've been living in a fool's paradise because today's crooks and criminals seldom take extraordinary measures to conceal data. Most of the forensics work in law enforcement that I'm aware of involves very basic data recovery techniques with a few popular forensics tools.
Others have a different view and study the subject with the aim of improving network processing and security, for example this one from the University of Toronto.
This post describes practical ways and tools to hide data at rest, in other words, data that sit on a device. Things like banking details, passwords, or files you want to keep private.
It is called steganography, and is literally the oldest trick in the book. Here is a list of great free tools. They hide data in image files or audio files, some tools come with added encryption.
They are all you need if you are a normal computer user.
For the more adventurous among you, another tool out of the basement of the K-Landnews is available here as an executable package and with the full source code. It supports the standard image file storage as well as homemade .wav audio.
More interesting, though, are other formats. Some are "beta" or somewhat experimental, others stable. See the section of supported output file formats at the end of the post.
Psychological aspects of hiding data:
1) Playing with cultural stereotypes and taboos, a light hearted description is in the older post Staganography -- hiding text in nudie pics
On a more serious note, childrens' drawings are likely to score high on the "not interesting" index, unless your kid is a prodigy.
2) Scare a snooper
The output file list at the end of the post has an entry "Java .jar file". To a snooper, this looks like an executable file, a program. Our implementation is simplistic, it merely replaces the content of a standard main.class file of Java executable jar with the scrambled message. But, to a snooper, a Java executable won't look as interesting as a text file and he or she will initially treat it as an unknown executable. Other executable formats would even be more formidable, say you wrote a C/C++ program with pernicious code to crash the operating system and hide your message somewhere in the executable.
3) Use formats from your work or something related to your hobbies. Yes, Item 1 can be a hobby, but that's not what we mean.
The sample formats "DNA sequence" and "empty xml file" are meant as examples for work/hobby related steganography. If you are a biologist, some "DNA txt files" on your device will look perfectly natural.
If you are an English teacher, put the data into the "empty xml" and add a public domain book or poem from Project Gutenberg. Again, a folder with "nothing" but Mark Twain books or some random English romantic poet's deeds provide good cover.
Suggestions for other professions:
If you are an engineer, extend the tool, write some output files based on standard formats from your daily work. How about a fake electronics component wiring diagram or some ChemDoodle Web drawings with a custom reader?
If you are a musician, use "note xml" or use standard musical notation with a customized optical character recognition module - similar to but more elaborate than the sample "hieroglyphs .png" implementation of the K-Landnews stego tool.
Computer games should be a fun container, too. You can make people play a game in order to reassemble data.
The following formats are supported
===================================
"binary or executable file": Using the File menu entries "Make binary double"
and "Combine binary double", you can now process binary files or
executable (program) files. Similar to the Double Strand text feature,
two output files will be created. The first one contains the scrambled
bytes of the binary file, the second the scrambled byte positions. To combine
the two and recreate the original binary file, select the two files (bin1) and
"numbers" bin. Cuttlefish will write out a file ending in "redone" as the
fully functional binary file.
"Double Strand": the text is saved into two files, one containing the characters,
the other named "filename_nubers.txt" containing the positions of
the characters in the original text. The order of the characters is
randomized, so you need both files (in the same directory) to extract the
message text.
".avi movie": the text is saved as a .avi movie and is displayed as a pink
bouncy ball in case you play the movie in a movie player.
WARNING: The format of avi rendering changed with v. 1.1. Previous avis
will not be decoded correctly.
Configure the bouncy image to "pacman" by changing the aviBlip "star" to
pacman.
Configure a footer image by replacing the existing footer.png. The new footer
image should be at least 500 pixels wide and 200 high. If it is higher, it
will automatically scroll upwards.
"PDF .pdf": a file in portable document (pdf) format.
"QR code .png": a Quick Response code .png file. Limit of 4200 characters.
".wav audio": a Wave audio file. Use CuttleFish to open a .wav message file.
"empty .xml file": saves the message in "metadata" of an .xml file. The file
is filled with unrelated text from a default template. Anybody reading the
text will only see the adventures of Huck Finn. You can replace this file,
which is an equivalent of "packing peanuts".
"plain .png image": the message is saved in a plain image file.
"javascript .html": saves the message in the javascript section of an html file.
You can replace the default file with any file that has a javascript section.
".asp vb html": saves the message in an html file that has a Microsoft asp
vb script section. You can replace the default file with any file that has such a section.
"Java .jar file": saves the message in a Java (tm) .jar file. A template jar is
included in the package. You can replace it with any other .jar, but your
replacement must have a manifest file with a "Main-class" entry.
"DNA sequence .txt": turns your message into a "DNA sequence" using only the four
basic building blocks ACGT. Mimicking of one or more common scientific formats
will be added.
[BETA] "hieroglyphs .png": turns a message into an image file with hieroglyphs.
You need the font "Gardiner.ttf" (free download from http://users.teilar.gr/~g1951d/).
Limitations of the BETA module: Only a couple of hundred of characters (need to add
page handling).
FONT DEPENDENCY: This module may fail if the graphics capabilities on the machines
of sender and recipient are too different. Please TELL us about issues!
[experimental] "CSS stylesheet .css": saves in a cascading stylesheet. This is a very rudimentray
implementation, really a proof of concept. You should change the source code CSSHandling
class to get a good implementation.
Monday, March 28, 2016
A successful Freedom of Information request for - vintage German porn
The blogster didn't intend to write about this piece of weird news.* It was mentioned in the German press almost two years ago and was shrugged off by the K-Landnews.
Until today.
A podcast episode of 99% Invisible about the German "Giftschrank" system led to some chit chat and the remark: Have you heard about the guy who filed a freedom of information request for vintage German porn?
First a brief summary of the "Giftschrank" system, the poison cabinet. Giftschrank is the traditional nickname of locations, usually part of institutional libraries, where governments historically stored banned literature. The effort started shortly after the printing press became popular, the press allowing all sorts of subversive, revolutionary or otherwise dangerous literature to be produced in large numbers.
The episode talks about the history of Giftschranks from the 1600s through modern times in Germany and includes some funny anecdotes about their use in East Germany.
You should listen to the podcast.
Now, to the episode of German vintage porn and a freedom of information request: An unknown porn aficionado was looking for a certain reel from 1983 but could not find a copy for sale anywhere.
His quest (assuming this was a male venture) eventually took him to the German office of youth protection's media products evaluation unit. The office looks at media products (books, mags, movies, video games, etc), and any items deemed potentially distressing or dangerous to young minds are put on an "index", which severely limits the sales channels and bans commercials for the wares.
Since the censors need to look at the potentially offending material, they keep a copy - another Giftschrank.
So, the porn fan figured that any product stored by this government agency is a government record and thus a legitimate target for a freedom of information request.
The office of youth protection did not agree and refused to send a copy of the requested porn movie.
Undeterred, the requester sued in administrative court.
And won.
According to the article from 2014, the office intended to appeal the decision. However, we could not find any further information about any appeal and assume they may have dropped it.
* Or we did and forgot already.
Until today.
A podcast episode of 99% Invisible about the German "Giftschrank" system led to some chit chat and the remark: Have you heard about the guy who filed a freedom of information request for vintage German porn?
First a brief summary of the "Giftschrank" system, the poison cabinet. Giftschrank is the traditional nickname of locations, usually part of institutional libraries, where governments historically stored banned literature. The effort started shortly after the printing press became popular, the press allowing all sorts of subversive, revolutionary or otherwise dangerous literature to be produced in large numbers.
The episode talks about the history of Giftschranks from the 1600s through modern times in Germany and includes some funny anecdotes about their use in East Germany.
You should listen to the podcast.
Now, to the episode of German vintage porn and a freedom of information request: An unknown porn aficionado was looking for a certain reel from 1983 but could not find a copy for sale anywhere.
His quest (assuming this was a male venture) eventually took him to the German office of youth protection's media products evaluation unit. The office looks at media products (books, mags, movies, video games, etc), and any items deemed potentially distressing or dangerous to young minds are put on an "index", which severely limits the sales channels and bans commercials for the wares.
Since the censors need to look at the potentially offending material, they keep a copy - another Giftschrank.
So, the porn fan figured that any product stored by this government agency is a government record and thus a legitimate target for a freedom of information request.
The office of youth protection did not agree and refused to send a copy of the requested porn movie.
Undeterred, the requester sued in administrative court.
And won.
According to the article from 2014, the office intended to appeal the decision. However, we could not find any further information about any appeal and assume they may have dropped it.
* Or we did and forgot already.
Sunday, March 27, 2016
Forget political "left" and "right", it's about power, empathy, and a few other things
When the blogster uses the terms left or right in the context of politics, it* feels a bit sad.
Originating from an 18th century legislature seating arrangement in France, they have come to dominate much of the political discourse. Ayn Rand even embraces the "welcome historic accident" of the meaning of "right" in the English language: "A notable advantage of embracing the political right as our own is that the term right happens to integrate seamlessly with the philosophical and conceptual hierarchy that supports freedom."
The idea of an "extreme left" and an "extreme right" being polar opposites while, at the same time, being just two sides of the same coin is deeply ingrained in the modern West and is expressed in daily politics, for example, in Germany, as described in the previous post German officials and extremism: always mention right and left together.
Even historians get seriously confused, especially when they try to make sense of the terms over time, for example, in this Twitter sequence:
To the blogster, "left" and "right" are borderline useful stereotypes for participation in standard discussions which involve a larger audience, or an unknown audience such as the readers of this blog post.
But they run against the way the blogster sees the world. The most important effect of this deep discrepancy is that many articles, OpEds, or commentaries on political issues seem boring, outright vapid, a waste of time.
There are earnest attempts to break through the fog. Take the article The Left-Right Political Spectrum is Bogus, from The Atlantic, as an example.
"It might be a division between social identities based on class or region or race or gender, but it is certainly not a clash between different ideas."
After this, we get the familiar arguments, the old cliches, with the admonition that they are bogus. But I agreed with the premise in the first place, otherwise I wouldn't have clicked the link at all.
Only towards the end does the blogster finally get something that feels right: We should arrange political positions according to whether they propose to increase hierarchy or to dismantle it. Instead of left and right, we should be thinking about vertical versus horizontal arrangements of power and wealth.
This may very well be one of the best foundations for moving beyond the confused "left" and "right" in this complex world with its communications with total strangers from across the planet.
Applying the concept laid out in The Atlantic, it becomes easier to understand how old authoritarian Soviet style "left" and fascist and modern "right" exhibit similar behaviors and patterns: power and hierarchy were used in a similar manner.
So, when the blogster heard a German police commander say that a "right wing" group of demonstrators used to follow orders by the police, the blogster was not surprised at all because right-leaning anti-immigrant, authoritarian movements should - according to the power/wealth/empathy paradigm - be generally happy with authority exercised by that universal representative of authority and power, the police force.
The news that German police treated Turkish "Grey Wolves" (authoritarian, nationalist, fascist) better than opposing Kurds at a demonstration in the city of Duisburg on March 26 fits into the same pattern.
As does the behavior of police in Cuba, or - more importantly and to the consternation of many political scientists - the situation in China, where a Communist party has been presiding over a starkly "Western looking" economy.
In looking at and analyzing news, the blogster goes beyond what the article in The Atlantic calls political positions and takes into account the wider psychological aspects addressed very succinctly in Philip Zimbardo's TED Talk: The psychology of evil.
The reason why the blogster does this?
I am not sure if this makes sense, but let's try: to the blogster, political positions, as expressed in discourse and programs, are a layer on top of an even more basic, underlying human condition.
Again, it makes much of what humans do and say unsurprising and in some ways irrelevant. But it is not a case of "we all die, so why do anything". You may not want to, or be able to, enjoy the finer points of upgrading your iPhone by one number and one letter as much as some people appear to, you may be poorer than your peers who read and believe a ton of career advice books.
It is fun to learn, to see where we go wrong, to embrace the uncertainty of it all. And it is fun to take down pompous egos (yes, we should start right here with this post, but we'll publish it first).
Life is a story, fiction. The pretty eggs and the plastic Easter bunnies someone took from the non-believers front porch decoration are now part of that person's fiction.
[Update 4/29/2016] Germans have seen their social security system slashed by what has been traditionally considered a "left" government of Social Democrats and Greens. Just this week, the current Social Democrat labor minister announced a bill that will prevent EU foreigners from receiving basic means tested social assistance for the first five years of their residence in Germany: that's one year more than the "populist right" AfD demands in its new political program.
* The K-Landnews went gender neutral years ago.
Originating from an 18th century legislature seating arrangement in France, they have come to dominate much of the political discourse. Ayn Rand even embraces the "welcome historic accident" of the meaning of "right" in the English language: "A notable advantage of embracing the political right as our own is that the term right happens to integrate seamlessly with the philosophical and conceptual hierarchy that supports freedom."
The idea of an "extreme left" and an "extreme right" being polar opposites while, at the same time, being just two sides of the same coin is deeply ingrained in the modern West and is expressed in daily politics, for example, in Germany, as described in the previous post German officials and extremism: always mention right and left together.
Even historians get seriously confused, especially when they try to make sense of the terms over time, for example, in this Twitter sequence:
To the blogster, "left" and "right" are borderline useful stereotypes for participation in standard discussions which involve a larger audience, or an unknown audience such as the readers of this blog post.
But they run against the way the blogster sees the world. The most important effect of this deep discrepancy is that many articles, OpEds, or commentaries on political issues seem boring, outright vapid, a waste of time.
There are earnest attempts to break through the fog. Take the article The Left-Right Political Spectrum is Bogus, from The Atlantic, as an example.
"It might be a division between social identities based on class or region or race or gender, but it is certainly not a clash between different ideas."
After this, we get the familiar arguments, the old cliches, with the admonition that they are bogus. But I agreed with the premise in the first place, otherwise I wouldn't have clicked the link at all.
Only towards the end does the blogster finally get something that feels right: We should arrange political positions according to whether they propose to increase hierarchy or to dismantle it. Instead of left and right, we should be thinking about vertical versus horizontal arrangements of power and wealth.
This may very well be one of the best foundations for moving beyond the confused "left" and "right" in this complex world with its communications with total strangers from across the planet.
Applying the concept laid out in The Atlantic, it becomes easier to understand how old authoritarian Soviet style "left" and fascist and modern "right" exhibit similar behaviors and patterns: power and hierarchy were used in a similar manner.
So, when the blogster heard a German police commander say that a "right wing" group of demonstrators used to follow orders by the police, the blogster was not surprised at all because right-leaning anti-immigrant, authoritarian movements should - according to the power/wealth/empathy paradigm - be generally happy with authority exercised by that universal representative of authority and power, the police force.
The news that German police treated Turkish "Grey Wolves" (authoritarian, nationalist, fascist) better than opposing Kurds at a demonstration in the city of Duisburg on March 26 fits into the same pattern.
As does the behavior of police in Cuba, or - more importantly and to the consternation of many political scientists - the situation in China, where a Communist party has been presiding over a starkly "Western looking" economy.
In looking at and analyzing news, the blogster goes beyond what the article in The Atlantic calls political positions and takes into account the wider psychological aspects addressed very succinctly in Philip Zimbardo's TED Talk: The psychology of evil.
The reason why the blogster does this?
I am not sure if this makes sense, but let's try: to the blogster, political positions, as expressed in discourse and programs, are a layer on top of an even more basic, underlying human condition.
Again, it makes much of what humans do and say unsurprising and in some ways irrelevant. But it is not a case of "we all die, so why do anything". You may not want to, or be able to, enjoy the finer points of upgrading your iPhone by one number and one letter as much as some people appear to, you may be poorer than your peers who read and believe a ton of career advice books.
It is fun to learn, to see where we go wrong, to embrace the uncertainty of it all. And it is fun to take down pompous egos (yes, we should start right here with this post, but we'll publish it first).
Life is a story, fiction. The pretty eggs and the plastic Easter bunnies someone took from the non-believers front porch decoration are now part of that person's fiction.
[Update 4/29/2016] Germans have seen their social security system slashed by what has been traditionally considered a "left" government of Social Democrats and Greens. Just this week, the current Social Democrat labor minister announced a bill that will prevent EU foreigners from receiving basic means tested social assistance for the first five years of their residence in Germany: that's one year more than the "populist right" AfD demands in its new political program.
* The K-Landnews went gender neutral years ago.
Friday, March 25, 2016
Next terror target is your fridge: German agriculture minister fights "best before/sell by" date labels
From our Science is for pussies series, sub category Not a sexy topic, so we put terror in the title.
Some in the European Union (EU) want to ban "best before/sell by" dates on packaged food.
The fight against these labels has been going on for several years and has been waged under two banners:
1) Some foods last almost forever, so there is not need for a date label.
2) Millions of tons of food are thrown away every year because of date labels.
The first argument is reasonable enough, and the EU has indeed loosened labeling requirements for salt, vinegar, and sugar. The Dutch agriculture minister also says "like rice, noodles, and coffee have nearly indefinite shelf life and the best before date only regards to quality instead of food security".
This means, the EU won't regulate quality any more, at least for these food groups.
Interesting.
Maybe the blogster was too trusting assuming the EU would deregulate without going over board. An article in today's zeitonline makes it clear that the attack on sell by/best before labels is an all out push justified by food waste statistics and choice.
The German agriculture minister, whose portfolio includes food and food safety, said "Customers can decide the point until which they want to use a food". The statement was made in connection with the grand design of "smart packages", for example a chip in a yogurt package that could measure the amount of bacteria and signal if the yogurt is still good.
In short, poor people should be able to poison themselves without being hampered by date labels.
The statistics for wasted food quoted in various reports don't tell us much. For Germany, the estimated total is 11 million tons wasted, of which 6.7 million are due to private households. The article, again reflecting the low level of detail in the whole debate, goes on to say that the FAO estimates that around one third of the world's food is wasted.
Ironically, the only people who seem to have any idea of the issue are folks like the Danish Stop Food Waste, who pointed out “The EU says that most of the consumer food waste happens with bread, fruits, vegetables, and diary products, not the long shelf products with best before dates, so this EU proposition … will not tackle the larger problem.”
Once again, the reader comments section of an article does the heavy lifting. It's the readers who point out the issues with the huge processed food industry, who describe the loss of vitamins and nutrients in food over time, or who actually know what happens to milk when it goes bad.
A complete ban on sell by/best before labels in a grocery store landscape where much of the "fresh" food is industrial or comes in packages you cannot inspect will kill some people.
[Update] Watch John Oliver's episode on Food Waste for a stomach churning overview.
Inconsistencies in government are plentiful, and Food safety is no exception. One of the favorite examples at the K-Landnews is the EU Novel Foods directive, which is a blanket ban on the distribution of food not widely sold in the EU before a certain date. The scope of the directive is incredibly vast, treating 100% synthetic items in the same way as fruit or vegetables consumed for thousands of years in other parts of the world. No one will mind that ferrous ammonium phosphate as a novel food ingredient requires authorization by the EU, but why it would take a directive in 2010 "authorising the placing on the market of puree and concentrate of the fruits of Morinda citrifolia as novel food ingredient" is less clear to those of us who grew up eating Mulberry fruit fresh off the tree.
Some in the European Union (EU) want to ban "best before/sell by" dates on packaged food.
The fight against these labels has been going on for several years and has been waged under two banners:
1) Some foods last almost forever, so there is not need for a date label.
2) Millions of tons of food are thrown away every year because of date labels.
The first argument is reasonable enough, and the EU has indeed loosened labeling requirements for salt, vinegar, and sugar. The Dutch agriculture minister also says "like rice, noodles, and coffee have nearly indefinite shelf life and the best before date only regards to quality instead of food security".
This means, the EU won't regulate quality any more, at least for these food groups.
Interesting.
Maybe the blogster was too trusting assuming the EU would deregulate without going over board. An article in today's zeitonline makes it clear that the attack on sell by/best before labels is an all out push justified by food waste statistics and choice.
The German agriculture minister, whose portfolio includes food and food safety, said "Customers can decide the point until which they want to use a food". The statement was made in connection with the grand design of "smart packages", for example a chip in a yogurt package that could measure the amount of bacteria and signal if the yogurt is still good.
In short, poor people should be able to poison themselves without being hampered by date labels.
The statistics for wasted food quoted in various reports don't tell us much. For Germany, the estimated total is 11 million tons wasted, of which 6.7 million are due to private households. The article, again reflecting the low level of detail in the whole debate, goes on to say that the FAO estimates that around one third of the world's food is wasted.
Ironically, the only people who seem to have any idea of the issue are folks like the Danish Stop Food Waste, who pointed out “The EU says that most of the consumer food waste happens with bread, fruits, vegetables, and diary products, not the long shelf products with best before dates, so this EU proposition … will not tackle the larger problem.”
Once again, the reader comments section of an article does the heavy lifting. It's the readers who point out the issues with the huge processed food industry, who describe the loss of vitamins and nutrients in food over time, or who actually know what happens to milk when it goes bad.
A complete ban on sell by/best before labels in a grocery store landscape where much of the "fresh" food is industrial or comes in packages you cannot inspect will kill some people.
[Update] Watch John Oliver's episode on Food Waste for a stomach churning overview.
Inconsistencies in government are plentiful, and Food safety is no exception. One of the favorite examples at the K-Landnews is the EU Novel Foods directive, which is a blanket ban on the distribution of food not widely sold in the EU before a certain date. The scope of the directive is incredibly vast, treating 100% synthetic items in the same way as fruit or vegetables consumed for thousands of years in other parts of the world. No one will mind that ferrous ammonium phosphate as a novel food ingredient requires authorization by the EU, but why it would take a directive in 2010 "authorising the placing on the market of puree and concentrate of the fruits of Morinda citrifolia as novel food ingredient" is less clear to those of us who grew up eating Mulberry fruit fresh off the tree.
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Hidden Germany: Hedgehog Underground
From our Not a band name series.
There is a largely unknown, thriving hedgehog underground in Germany. This realization came to the blogster in the course of caring for Valentine, the handful of prickly critter found in the freezing days of early February.
Several websites with information, while helpful, did not give a comprehensive picture of the prevalence of the hedgehog rescue phenomenon. You can think of it in terms of underground music venues, free outside movie screenings in summer, or any other pastime.
People don't advertise their hedgehog rescue activities like they do for cats, or dogs.
Taking a member of the protected Great Prickly species home is allowed only to save the animal, and that might be one reason why Germans keep it on the down low. But then, Germans in general are more reserved, even regarding things as mundane as the best time to plant lettuce.
But they will talk about hedgehogs freely once the subject comes up. It's not something requiring the use of code, like, for example, when your parents tell you they are going to visit friends over night on a weekend, which may really mean they are off to a swinger's party.
In our rural German hills, it seems that every other person you talk to has a hedgehog in their basement or barn over the winter.
The customer service person at the farming co-op store lit up on "hedgehog". Oh, yeah, we have a whole bunch, she said as she launched into dietary needs and general care of the Great Pricklies.
As it turns out, hedgehogs are big eaters with a consequently very active and voluminous output of digested food. This fact will make you go and talk to a lot of strangers.
The question to a reclusive hill country farmer: can I have a bag or so of straw normally brings at least some slightly inquisitorial sounding question by way of an answer. But add "for a hedgehog", and you are spared not only a frowning "what for exactly" - the kind the blogster imagines you'd get if you asked for an ingredient for a homemade IED - but you'll get a garbage bag full of crisp, nice smelling straw. For free, and with a smiling just let me know of you need more.
Even the tax preparer outed herself as very knowledgeable regarding the bedding needs of hedgehogs when asked for as much shredded paper as car could hold. We spent almost the whole time talking about the well loved solitary rambler and barely about income and taxes. Not that that requires a lot of time anyway.
So, as Valentine is nearing its release, we can summarize that the hedgehog, too, has brought us new friends, just like the lost cat in the early days in Germany.
[Update 5/5/2016] The second rescue hedgehog of last winter has been out in the wild again for a week. The blogster still chuckles every now and then about how different the personalities of the two were. Valentine turned out to be such a ham, an extrovert without fear, unrolling while on his back, leisurely stretching. Attica was much more reserved, she was in worse health and needed several trips to the vet. He bathroom habits almost rivaled that out our super clean cats. Her favorite game was to topple the plastic bucket that contained the blogster's gloves and then hide the gloves.
The fact that the vet treated the hedgehogs pro bono was a nice surprise in a country where pro bono work of any kind is extremely rare.
There is a largely unknown, thriving hedgehog underground in Germany. This realization came to the blogster in the course of caring for Valentine, the handful of prickly critter found in the freezing days of early February.
Several websites with information, while helpful, did not give a comprehensive picture of the prevalence of the hedgehog rescue phenomenon. You can think of it in terms of underground music venues, free outside movie screenings in summer, or any other pastime.
People don't advertise their hedgehog rescue activities like they do for cats, or dogs.
Taking a member of the protected Great Prickly species home is allowed only to save the animal, and that might be one reason why Germans keep it on the down low. But then, Germans in general are more reserved, even regarding things as mundane as the best time to plant lettuce.
But they will talk about hedgehogs freely once the subject comes up. It's not something requiring the use of code, like, for example, when your parents tell you they are going to visit friends over night on a weekend, which may really mean they are off to a swinger's party.
In our rural German hills, it seems that every other person you talk to has a hedgehog in their basement or barn over the winter.
The customer service person at the farming co-op store lit up on "hedgehog". Oh, yeah, we have a whole bunch, she said as she launched into dietary needs and general care of the Great Pricklies.
As it turns out, hedgehogs are big eaters with a consequently very active and voluminous output of digested food. This fact will make you go and talk to a lot of strangers.
The question to a reclusive hill country farmer: can I have a bag or so of straw normally brings at least some slightly inquisitorial sounding question by way of an answer. But add "for a hedgehog", and you are spared not only a frowning "what for exactly" - the kind the blogster imagines you'd get if you asked for an ingredient for a homemade IED - but you'll get a garbage bag full of crisp, nice smelling straw. For free, and with a smiling just let me know of you need more.
Even the tax preparer outed herself as very knowledgeable regarding the bedding needs of hedgehogs when asked for as much shredded paper as car could hold. We spent almost the whole time talking about the well loved solitary rambler and barely about income and taxes. Not that that requires a lot of time anyway.
So, as Valentine is nearing its release, we can summarize that the hedgehog, too, has brought us new friends, just like the lost cat in the early days in Germany.
[Update 5/5/2016] The second rescue hedgehog of last winter has been out in the wild again for a week. The blogster still chuckles every now and then about how different the personalities of the two were. Valentine turned out to be such a ham, an extrovert without fear, unrolling while on his back, leisurely stretching. Attica was much more reserved, she was in worse health and needed several trips to the vet. He bathroom habits almost rivaled that out our super clean cats. Her favorite game was to topple the plastic bucket that contained the blogster's gloves and then hide the gloves.
The fact that the vet treated the hedgehogs pro bono was a nice surprise in a country where pro bono work of any kind is extremely rare.
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
A tall tale of a toad named Donald and the role of ritual in public speech
From our Calaveras County Mark Twain series.
Here is how the blogster came to nickname a toad Donald, after Donald Trump.
In the dark, wet early morning hours, a big toad, half up on its hind legs, was sitting in the middle of the country road, facing the oncoming car. The driver saw the toad and evaded it.
Donald, I'm nicknaming the toad Donald, after Trump!
Can't you see, the Donald is exactly like the toad, all puffed up facing the eighteen wheeler of StopTrump barreling towards him, yelling: Come on, come on, I challenge you. I bet you are being driven by a Muslim, better, a Muslim woman. It's gonna be a fight, a beautiful fight. All those cars before you...I made them miss through my sheer beautiful willpower, my intelligence...come on, it's gonna be a beautiful fight.
Splosh.
The blogster continues to be bored by all the air time and ink/black bytes spent on the toad after a couple of folks already said what needed to be said.
Bring up all the left, right, and middle-ish arguments you want, they are mere decoration.
The point of The Donald is that he has broken the rituals of presidential candidate public speech.
All the crap, the dumb things that our rituals of discourse generally and successfully prevent people from saying, he just says them.
That, my friends, is what infuriates the righteous and not so righteous alike. "We" know we are looking at a ritual - or at least we should realize that by now - but ignoring a strong ritual, or a taboo, is what gets you run over by the proverbial eighteen wheeler.
Somehow, humans don't seem to take well to deep seated rituals being challenged, even if it is all theater.
Have you forgotten the sitting president's remark that politics involves a lot of theater?
The story is really about us: we don't elect a pacifist into office (sorry, Bernie), we are busy making enough money to live or to rake in more, we don't want to let go of the notion of dirty work that needs to be done - but we don't want to be responsible.
No, please, don't come up with that Hitler again, because that one would never have made it without a decade or more of support from "conservative" Germans. Heck, in the last free elections in the early 1930s, "the Germans" did not vote Hitler into office - he was heaved into the job by the other conservative parties.
The story of The Donald is a tall tale, nothing more, nothing less.
Here is how the blogster came to nickname a toad Donald, after Donald Trump.
In the dark, wet early morning hours, a big toad, half up on its hind legs, was sitting in the middle of the country road, facing the oncoming car. The driver saw the toad and evaded it.
Donald, I'm nicknaming the toad Donald, after Trump!
Can't you see, the Donald is exactly like the toad, all puffed up facing the eighteen wheeler of StopTrump barreling towards him, yelling: Come on, come on, I challenge you. I bet you are being driven by a Muslim, better, a Muslim woman. It's gonna be a fight, a beautiful fight. All those cars before you...I made them miss through my sheer beautiful willpower, my intelligence...come on, it's gonna be a beautiful fight.
Splosh.
The blogster continues to be bored by all the air time and ink/black bytes spent on the toad after a couple of folks already said what needed to be said.
Bring up all the left, right, and middle-ish arguments you want, they are mere decoration.
The point of The Donald is that he has broken the rituals of presidential candidate public speech.
All the crap, the dumb things that our rituals of discourse generally and successfully prevent people from saying, he just says them.
That, my friends, is what infuriates the righteous and not so righteous alike. "We" know we are looking at a ritual - or at least we should realize that by now - but ignoring a strong ritual, or a taboo, is what gets you run over by the proverbial eighteen wheeler.
Somehow, humans don't seem to take well to deep seated rituals being challenged, even if it is all theater.
Have you forgotten the sitting president's remark that politics involves a lot of theater?
The story is really about us: we don't elect a pacifist into office (sorry, Bernie), we are busy making enough money to live or to rake in more, we don't want to let go of the notion of dirty work that needs to be done - but we don't want to be responsible.
No, please, don't come up with that Hitler again, because that one would never have made it without a decade or more of support from "conservative" Germans. Heck, in the last free elections in the early 1930s, "the Germans" did not vote Hitler into office - he was heaved into the job by the other conservative parties.
The story of The Donald is a tall tale, nothing more, nothing less.
How Breaking Bad saved two German kids from the Teutonic Drug War
Cultural stereotypes can keep people out of prison. Yes, most of what we read and hear about stereotypes indicates it normally works the other way round, with stereotypes making lives harder or simply destroying lives.
The innocents abroad face many a stereotype. To name but a few: cars and cowboys, hyper militarized torture crazies and peacenik hippies, some of the planets worst beers and some of the world's best drugs.
While we continuously hear how hard it is for native English speakers to learn German because you are instantly drafted as an involuntary tutor or, even worse, face a German or other ethnicity who spells English better than you, there is a less talked about role.
That of involuntary, unaccredited drug war consultant.
TV series revolving around drugs, like Breaking Bad, or a plethora of other series and Hollywood stoner movies since, at least, Cheech and Chong have deeply ingrained in almost all Europeans that any American knows drugs better than the locals.
The fact is that this is largely true for Americans who grew up during the Drug war, and thus no longer a stereotype in the dismissive sense of the term.
Here is a practical tip: If a German gets the impression you know more than him or her about drugs, do not tell him or her you do not use drugs. The blogster once told a German friend how easy going and non-judgemental American pot smokers are when you simply say "no, thanks", how that stoner friend of yours remains a friend despite you never touching a proffered joint. The smile and the head movement of that German friend translated approximately into "sure, whatever, I won't believe you, but hey".
So, if you don't actively dispel the notion created by these TV series and movies, you may be drafted as happened to the blogster. The blogster may not have been the consultant of choice but a victim of its* work schedule, which so happened to show ample free time in the morning.
Imagine an agitated phone call by a German parent, almost begging you to come over to the house because something relating to the teen kids happened. Since you feel like having another cup of coffee, you try to determine the urgency of the request. The parent launches into a sentence starting with "we searched the room", at which point you cut off the poor adult and tell him or her to not say another word.
The situation at the parents' home was characterized by panic.
[Note: a number of facts and events have been left out of the following description, names are not the real names.]
Can I have a coffee? always helps, it breaks up what sounds like a Dada-esque automatic stream of consciousness flow of colliding utterances, and it gets you a coffee.
The found objects sat on the living room table. They included a small amount of pot in a half empty bay, several unused dime bags, and a scale.
Even without knowing details about the Teutonic Drug War, this looked bad.
Do you know how local police and courts typically handle possession of marijuana? was one of the many questions of the blogster trying to get a feeling of the threat to the kids.
The best the parents could do was cite some TV news and the story of a young woman a few blocks away. The young woman had been caught with a couple of grams of pot several years earlier, she had been sent to counseling, and she had struggled socially ever since she had returned.
Not because of the drug, but because of the stigma.
We will send her to group therapy, like Anna. If we do this before the police find out, she will have a second chance.
Oh, so you want her to get to know more people who have friends with better pot than this and maybe hard drugs?
The involuntary drug war consultant managed to calm the frayed nerves and suggested to call the other parents involved. And don't forget to get rid of the stuff.
A few years have since passed, and everybody is doing fine.
If you want to know a couple of reasons why the blogster finds the drug war evil, see this post.
* Gender neutrality at the K-Landnews as mandated by TheEditor.
The innocents abroad face many a stereotype. To name but a few: cars and cowboys, hyper militarized torture crazies and peacenik hippies, some of the planets worst beers and some of the world's best drugs.
While we continuously hear how hard it is for native English speakers to learn German because you are instantly drafted as an involuntary tutor or, even worse, face a German or other ethnicity who spells English better than you, there is a less talked about role.
That of involuntary, unaccredited drug war consultant.
TV series revolving around drugs, like Breaking Bad, or a plethora of other series and Hollywood stoner movies since, at least, Cheech and Chong have deeply ingrained in almost all Europeans that any American knows drugs better than the locals.
The fact is that this is largely true for Americans who grew up during the Drug war, and thus no longer a stereotype in the dismissive sense of the term.
Here is a practical tip: If a German gets the impression you know more than him or her about drugs, do not tell him or her you do not use drugs. The blogster once told a German friend how easy going and non-judgemental American pot smokers are when you simply say "no, thanks", how that stoner friend of yours remains a friend despite you never touching a proffered joint. The smile and the head movement of that German friend translated approximately into "sure, whatever, I won't believe you, but hey".
So, if you don't actively dispel the notion created by these TV series and movies, you may be drafted as happened to the blogster. The blogster may not have been the consultant of choice but a victim of its* work schedule, which so happened to show ample free time in the morning.
Imagine an agitated phone call by a German parent, almost begging you to come over to the house because something relating to the teen kids happened. Since you feel like having another cup of coffee, you try to determine the urgency of the request. The parent launches into a sentence starting with "we searched the room", at which point you cut off the poor adult and tell him or her to not say another word.
The situation at the parents' home was characterized by panic.
[Note: a number of facts and events have been left out of the following description, names are not the real names.]
Can I have a coffee? always helps, it breaks up what sounds like a Dada-esque automatic stream of consciousness flow of colliding utterances, and it gets you a coffee.
The found objects sat on the living room table. They included a small amount of pot in a half empty bay, several unused dime bags, and a scale.
Even without knowing details about the Teutonic Drug War, this looked bad.
Do you know how local police and courts typically handle possession of marijuana? was one of the many questions of the blogster trying to get a feeling of the threat to the kids.
The best the parents could do was cite some TV news and the story of a young woman a few blocks away. The young woman had been caught with a couple of grams of pot several years earlier, she had been sent to counseling, and she had struggled socially ever since she had returned.
Not because of the drug, but because of the stigma.
We will send her to group therapy, like Anna. If we do this before the police find out, she will have a second chance.
Oh, so you want her to get to know more people who have friends with better pot than this and maybe hard drugs?
The involuntary drug war consultant managed to calm the frayed nerves and suggested to call the other parents involved. And don't forget to get rid of the stuff.
A few years have since passed, and everybody is doing fine.
If you want to know a couple of reasons why the blogster finds the drug war evil, see this post.
* Gender neutrality at the K-Landnews as mandated by TheEditor.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Continued desertification of the German internet - "ancillary copyright"
From our The German internet is a desert series.
A few years ago, Germany passed an "ancillary copyright" law (Leistungsschutzrecht) designed to enable rights holders to claim payment for the use of "snippets" of content from their web sites when these showed up in news aggregations or internet news sites.
All things digital site netzpolitik.org finally managed to get a couple of FOIA requests through, and now we have the machinations that went on in the making of the law.
If you are not interested in the law itself, we recommend the K-Landnews take on money for nothing in German gardener to sue beekeeper over pollen profits?
First, a quick overview of the law as it stands:
The nickname "Google law" illustrated that the law was not about ensuring "creative professionals" received a "fair share" for published work but a simple "money for nothing" scheme to get at some of Google's ad revenue.
Problems with the law were fully known before it passed:
1) Google and many other aggregators didn't show ads on aggregation sites, so there was no income from the aggregation itself.
2) The length of snippets was ill defined.
3) Publishers could opt out.
4) Aggregators could drop publishers.
Items 3 and 4 put together took care of the law. Even the most vociferous supporters quietly signed the "no revenue and we won't delist you" contracts with the big players, leaving some small aggregators in their crosshairs. The large publishers, like Bild or Burda, did not want to loose millions of search engine referrals each month for uncertain snippets revenue. Court challenges of the opt out model failed.
Although most legal experts have called for the law to be rescinded, it is still on the books.
What Netzpolitik found about the deliberation.
The main government officials working on the bill distorted the views of the "internet community", stating that the community wanted all copyrighted content to be free, gratis.
The main official fully supported the stance of the "Content Alliance" (composed of public TV, music rights enforcer GEMA, a publishing lobbyist (who took a government job soon after), a print publisher association.
In a letter to Chancellor Merkel, published in full by Netzpolitik, the official goes out of his way to dissuade the Chancellor from meeting representatives of the "net community" before meeting members of the Content Alliance. He wrote that such a meeting would be "perceived with criticism" by the Content Alliance.
A minor problem: the meeting of the Chancellor with community representatives had already been scheduled.
His solution: The Chancellor should cancel her participation for "scheduling reasons", which would "easily pass as credible".
The documents published by Netzpolitik on the issue show without doubt that any public talk of "cooperation" and "inclusion" of the arguments of the net community was a smoke screen. The law was going ahead as planned and "suggested" by the Content Alliance.
[Update 6/28/2016] A court in the capital, Berlin, handed the association of publishers VGMedia a resounding defeat four months ago when the organization sued to force Google to pay for "snippets". The court stated that Google was acting in within the law by asking only VGMedia associated publishers for a free license if they wanted to see their offering listed in the search engine's aggregated news. VGMedia is now changing its strategy by suing Google for alleged abuse of its market power in requiring a free license for snippets (Google has over 90% of search market share in Germany).
At the same time, the association is trying to push for an EU regulation to mandate German style "ancillary copyright" for all European Union countries.
[Update 12/8/2016] Based on an earlier European Court of Justice decision regarding potential liability for links to web pages, a superior court in Hamburg, Germany, decided a case in which the operator of a site was accused of having linked to a page which contained an image that was used by the destination (target) page without permission of the photographer.
The court held that the operator of the site setting the link was liable for copyright infringement. Website operators/authors who use a simple text link to another web page are thus liable, even if they do not know and can not determine whether the destination page infringes on any intellectual property rights.
Initial comments on the web say that this provision applies to "commercial sites". The court, however, uses a much vaguer term of "sites intending to gain financially".
The blogster is willing to bet one Susan B. Anthony dollar that having any ads on a site will be considered proof of this intention.
After all, this is Germany.
Disclaimer:
The blogster has, surprise, some personal experience with working on television series that ran in Germany. Royalties never made to the blogster. Members of the "Content Alliance" have a number of, let's say, interesting hurdles in place for "creative professionals" who do not work for the big publishers.
A few years ago, Germany passed an "ancillary copyright" law (Leistungsschutzrecht) designed to enable rights holders to claim payment for the use of "snippets" of content from their web sites when these showed up in news aggregations or internet news sites.
All things digital site netzpolitik.org finally managed to get a couple of FOIA requests through, and now we have the machinations that went on in the making of the law.
If you are not interested in the law itself, we recommend the K-Landnews take on money for nothing in German gardener to sue beekeeper over pollen profits?
First, a quick overview of the law as it stands:
The nickname "Google law" illustrated that the law was not about ensuring "creative professionals" received a "fair share" for published work but a simple "money for nothing" scheme to get at some of Google's ad revenue.
Problems with the law were fully known before it passed:
1) Google and many other aggregators didn't show ads on aggregation sites, so there was no income from the aggregation itself.
2) The length of snippets was ill defined.
3) Publishers could opt out.
4) Aggregators could drop publishers.
Items 3 and 4 put together took care of the law. Even the most vociferous supporters quietly signed the "no revenue and we won't delist you" contracts with the big players, leaving some small aggregators in their crosshairs. The large publishers, like Bild or Burda, did not want to loose millions of search engine referrals each month for uncertain snippets revenue. Court challenges of the opt out model failed.
Although most legal experts have called for the law to be rescinded, it is still on the books.
What Netzpolitik found about the deliberation.
The main government officials working on the bill distorted the views of the "internet community", stating that the community wanted all copyrighted content to be free, gratis.
The main official fully supported the stance of the "Content Alliance" (composed of public TV, music rights enforcer GEMA, a publishing lobbyist (who took a government job soon after), a print publisher association.
In a letter to Chancellor Merkel, published in full by Netzpolitik, the official goes out of his way to dissuade the Chancellor from meeting representatives of the "net community" before meeting members of the Content Alliance. He wrote that such a meeting would be "perceived with criticism" by the Content Alliance.
A minor problem: the meeting of the Chancellor with community representatives had already been scheduled.
His solution: The Chancellor should cancel her participation for "scheduling reasons", which would "easily pass as credible".
The documents published by Netzpolitik on the issue show without doubt that any public talk of "cooperation" and "inclusion" of the arguments of the net community was a smoke screen. The law was going ahead as planned and "suggested" by the Content Alliance.
[Update 6/28/2016] A court in the capital, Berlin, handed the association of publishers VGMedia a resounding defeat four months ago when the organization sued to force Google to pay for "snippets". The court stated that Google was acting in within the law by asking only VGMedia associated publishers for a free license if they wanted to see their offering listed in the search engine's aggregated news. VGMedia is now changing its strategy by suing Google for alleged abuse of its market power in requiring a free license for snippets (Google has over 90% of search market share in Germany).
At the same time, the association is trying to push for an EU regulation to mandate German style "ancillary copyright" for all European Union countries.
[Update 12/8/2016] Based on an earlier European Court of Justice decision regarding potential liability for links to web pages, a superior court in Hamburg, Germany, decided a case in which the operator of a site was accused of having linked to a page which contained an image that was used by the destination (target) page without permission of the photographer.
The court held that the operator of the site setting the link was liable for copyright infringement. Website operators/authors who use a simple text link to another web page are thus liable, even if they do not know and can not determine whether the destination page infringes on any intellectual property rights.
Initial comments on the web say that this provision applies to "commercial sites". The court, however, uses a much vaguer term of "sites intending to gain financially".
The blogster is willing to bet one Susan B. Anthony dollar that having any ads on a site will be considered proof of this intention.
After all, this is Germany.
Disclaimer:
The blogster has, surprise, some personal experience with working on television series that ran in Germany. Royalties never made to the blogster. Members of the "Content Alliance" have a number of, let's say, interesting hurdles in place for "creative professionals" who do not work for the big publishers.
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