Everyman links to a copyright work

Everyman: I’m trying to understand copyright and linking. With three pending references to the CJEU (Svensson, C More Entertainment, BestWater) I guess we will get some clarity before too long?

Scholarly Lawyer: We’ll get decisions. Clarity would be a bonus.

E: Why is this an issue at all?  Doesn’t everyone link on the internet?

SL: Of course. Trillions of links cause no problem at all. But some copyright owners want the right to control who creates links, or at least public links, to their works.

E: Do they have any basis for that? 

SL: The main battle at the moment is around the copyright communication to the public right.  Some national courts have said that it covers some types of linking.

E: Even where the rightsholder has put the material on the internet itself?  We’re not just talking about linking to infringing copies?

SL: Communication to the public is a pretty blunt instrument. It just refers to communication to the public of ‘works’. 

E: Which could cover authorised as well as unauthorised copies?

SL: Exactly. If the right covers linking to infringing copies, on the face of it copyright owners end up with a right to control linking to material that they have put on the internet themselves.

E: Which would be absurd.

SL: Most people would think so.  Even the most devoted adherents of strong copyright tend to stop short of arguing that rightsowners should be able to control simple linking to their own material.  

E: So where do they draw the line?

SL: They tie themselves in knots trying to do it.  The reality is there is no obvious principled basis on which to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate linking within the communication to the public right – and probably no comprehensible one either.

E: But didn't Mr Justice Arnold recently distil 18 principlesfrom the nine CJEU cases on communication to the public?

SL: Yes. A heavier burden than one sentence of any EU Directive should have to bear.
E: What about reference linking?  Isn’t that a good dividing line?

SL: No-one agrees on what reference linking is. All links have a reference function because they refer to resources on the internet.  But you are right: the International Literary and Artistic Association (ALAI) based their recent Report and Opinion on what they called reference linking.

E: How did they define it?

SL: They distinguished between a link direct to specific material protected by copyright, using its URL; and a link which “does not make a specific protected material available, but merely works as a reference to a source where it may be possible to access it and where access to the specific work itself or otherwise protected material is not achieved.”

E: A bit of a mouthful, but doesn’t that make some sense?

SL: Not really.  This is a link to the ALAI report – a PDF file. The ALAI’s position is that it needs their permission (assuming they are the copyright owner), because it is direct to specific copyright protected material using its URL. A link to a file, in other words.

E: OK then, this link is to the page containing the ALAI report. Aren’t they saying that that link shouldn’t need permission because it only refers to a source from which you can access the report?

SL:  If so, it doesn’t help. The page that you have just linked to is itself probably a copyright work. The link may be a reference link viz a viz the report, but it is a direct link to the webpage using its URL. The webpage is an HTML file.  So on the ALAI’s logic it must need the permission of the copyright owner of the web page. You still end up in the position that every link – even a link to a home page – needs permission, unless the target page is for some reason not protected by copyright.

E: Oh. What sort of other links are there?

SL: You name it.  Simple links, deep links, inline links, embedded links, framing links, aggregating links, links to infringing copies, links to downloads, links to streams.

E: But none of them involves the linking site in storing the copyright material?

SL: Correct, except where the linking code has captured a thumbnail of a target image or video. And in none of them is the linking site or link creator part of the transmission stream.  That always goes direct from the target site to the user.

E: Does that matter?

SL: The Copyright Directive talks about the right to authorise or prohibit communication to the public of the work “by wire or wireless means”. According to Recital (23) the right “should not cover any other acts”.

E: That’s why the UK copyright legislation says the communication must be "by electronic transmission"?

SL: Yes. So you would expect the right to apply to those who initiate or intervene in the actual transmission.  That’s been true of every CJEU case so far.  The furthest the CJEU has gone, in Airfield, is to include someone who provided the encryption key and decryption card that enabled a user to receive an encrypted broadcast. The CJEU said this was an intervention without which those subscribers would not be able to enjoy the works broadcast.

E: Seems a long way from linking.  Surely people can access a work on the internet whether or not someone has linked to it?

SL: If it is publicly available, yes. The European Copyright Society Opinion on Svensson leads with the transmission point.  They say “Hyperlinks are not communications because establishing a hyperlink does not amount to ‘transmission’ of a work, and such transmission is a pre-requisite for ‘communication’.”  

E: But many national courts have held that linking can be a communication to the public.  If intervention in transmission is required, how can they have done that?

SL: By taking a very broad view of intervention.  The courts have tended to consider intervention in the availability of the work generally, without really focusing on whether there was intervention in the transmission.

E: Does any of this really matter? Isn’t linking so widespread that we all have implied permission to do it?

SL: Not if there are express licence terms on the target website.  And probably not if the link is to an infringing file.  In any case implied licence doesn’t address some pretty fundamental objections to requiring permission. Is a Twitter user really supposed to access the target site and check whether there are express licence terms, and if not consider whether there might be an implied licence, before tweeting (or retweeting) a link to an item on it? And how can the tweeter tell if the siteowner is entitled to give permission? In Svensson the link was to articles licensed by a newspaper, but which the plaintiff journalists said the newspaper didn’t have their authority to license.

E: I feel a chilling effect coming on.

SL: You’d be right.

E: Didn’t Tim Berners-Lee say that a right not to be referred to pulls the rug from under free speech?

SL: Yes. And SABAM v Scarlet demonstrates that the days when copyright could sit in its own little bubble, finely dissecting the wording of copyright treaties without regard to the human rights framework around it, are long gone at least in Europe.

E: If there are international treaties, don’t we have to abide by them?

SL: Certainly, but copyright instruments are not the only international treaties to which we adhere. The European Convention on Human Rights is also an international treaty. A copyright treaty has to be interpreted in a way that is compatible with and takes into account international treaty obligations in respect of fundamental human rights.

E: Aren’t some types of linking still potentially damaging to copyright owners?

SL: Perhaps, but the communication to the public right is far too blunt an instrument to catch culpable behaviour while leaving the rest alone.  If you want to catch culpable behaviour, there are better tools such as accessory liability for someone else’s infringement.  However that is outside the CJEU’s remit as it is not harmonised across the EU.

E: Roll on Svensson.
 

Communication agents will sell telephone and Internet time

ETECSA is taking applications for communication agents who will sell and reload prepaid phone and Internet access cards, make calls and collect bills.

The agents will work on commission and charge the same prices as ETECSA. They will also pay taxes. Will this eliminate the black market for resale of Internet access?

This is reminiscent of Grameenphone's Village Phone agents in Bangladesh. In 1997, Grameen Bank began making making micro-finance loans to agents in rural villages who would purchase cell phones and sell calling time. They now have 210,000 phone agents and have also established "hut spots" -- village Internet access and services offices.

Quick update on Alan Gross on the fourth anniversary of his imprisonment

Alan Gross’ wife plans a protest at the White House on December 3 -- hoping to persuade President Obama to move to exchange Gross for the "Cuban Five."

I learned of this planned protest from a press release issued by JTA, a Jewish news agency. JTA has published 23 releases on Gross since he was arrested -- providing a timeline for the case.

I've also published several more detailed posts on this blog.
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Update 12/2/2013

What do Barbara Boxer and Ted Cruz agree on? That Alan Gross should be freed.

On the fourth anniversary of his imprisonment in Cuba, former U.S. government contractor Alan Gross wrote a letter to President Obama, asking him to personally intervene in his case.

That letter, two others, signed by 14 and 66 US Senators are reproduced along with an article on the case in the Washington Post.
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Update 2/10/2014

Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat from North Dakota just returned from a three day trip to Cuba to talk about agricultural trade. Heitkamp, who favors a change in our relationship to Cuba, met with Alan Gross and said that his "incarceration has really led to a point of difficulty in our continuing effort to normalize relations."

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Update 8/4/2014

Alan Gross is depressed and threatening suicide, saying "life in prison is not a life worth living." What he attempted would have had little practical impact had he succeeded -- why prolong his imprisonment?

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Update 10/5/2014

CCTV (Chinese) video (9:48) interview of Judy Gros, wife of Alan Gross, She claims he was there to connect to the Cuban intranet, not the Internet, but then what was the satellite equipment for? She also claims that Gross did not know he was violating Cuban law. They also mention the Zunzuneo project, which she calls "stupid."

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Update 11/3/2014

A New York Times editorial calls for a prisoner swap -- Alan Gross for the remaining Cuban Five. For more on Alan gross click here.

Supporters of Alan Gross across from the White House last year. CreditPaul J. Richards/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A poster in Havana of the Cuban Five, in August 2005.CreditAdalberto Roque/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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Update 11/8/2014

CNN reports that there have been government talks about a prisoner exchange:

The signs include the admission this week by senior administration officials that talks about a swap between Gross and three imprisoned Cuban agents -- part of group originally known as the Cuban Five -- have taken place.

The coverage also includes a short video:



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Update 11/12/2014

Senators Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, and Tom Udall, a Democrat from New Mexico, said they met with Gross for about two hours during a trip that included meetings with Cuban officials and they are optimistic about the release of Alan Gross.

There has been a flurry of other news about Alan Gross lately. Articles about him have been turning up in my "Google Alerts" pretty much every day, the USAID is reviewing their Cuban-democracy efforts and the New York Times and others are calling for the release of Gross and the end of the embargo.

I would not be surprised if he were released soon.

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Update 12/3/2014

Suggestion for a negotiating tactic

Would it help if the US were to take responsibility for the various USAID attempts to influence Cubans?

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Update 12/11/2014

Clip from interview of President Obama (1m 2s) -- they've been negotiating for some time through a variety of channels.

Advocate General's Site Blocking Opinion in 15 tweets

[Update: the Court issued its judgment on 27 March 2014.  My assessment here.]

Today the CJEU issued the Advocate General's Opinion in the UPC Telekabel copyright site blocking case.  The Court's official press release is here (PDF).

And here is my attempt to summarise the Opinion (doing the best I can courtesy of Google Translate, since there is no English version) in 15 tweets:


  As a reminder, these were the questions posed by the Austrian court:

1. Is Article 8(3) of Directive 2001/29/EC (the Information Directive) to be interpreted as meaning that a person who makes protected subject-matter available on the internet without the rightholder's consent (Article 3(2) of the Information Directive) is using the services of the access providers of persons seeking access to that protected subject-matter? [AG's suggested answer: Yes.]

2. If the answer to the first question is in the negative: Are reproduction for private use (Article 5(2)(b) of the Information Directive) and transient and incidental reproduction (Article 5(1) of the Information Directive) permissible only if the original of the reproduction was lawfully reproduced, distributed or made available to the public? [AG's suggested answer: N/A.]

3. If the answer to the first question or the second question is in the affirmative and an injunction is therefore to be issued against the user's access provider in accordance with Article 8(3) of the Information Directive:

Is it compatible with Union law, in particular with the necessary balance between the parties' fundamental rights, to quite simply prohibit an access provider from allowing its customers access to a certain website (without ordering specific measures) as long as the material available on that website is provided exclusively or predominantly without the rightholder's consent, if the access provider can avoid incurring preventive penalties for breach of the prohibition by showing that it had nevertheless taken all reasonable measures? [AG's suggested answer: No.]

4. If the answer to the third question is in the negative: Is it compatible with Union law, in particular with the necessary balance between the parties' fundamental rights, to require an access provider to take specific measures to make it more difficult for its customers to access a website containing material that is made available unlawfully if those measures require not inconsiderable costs and can easily be circumvented without any special technical knowledge? [AG's suggested answer: It can be. The national court must balance the various competing fundamental rights.]

Hat tip to Thijs van den Heuvel (@TMVDH) for Storifying my tweets.

Material para enseñar a los niños a programar y usar las computadoras

Mi hija y yo estamos preparando una colección de materiales didácticos en español dirigida a los jóvenes. Nos estamos centrando en tres programas - Tuxpaint, Scratch y FrontlineSMS.

Tuxpaint es un programa de dibujo dirigido a los niños de escuela primaria - que tiene todo tipo de herramientas, como sellos y transformaciones, que permiten de forma rápida hacer dibujos complejos con sonidos atractivos. Los niños pequeños lo aprenden con facilidad lo que les permite desarrollar las habilidades para navegar por el sistema operativo y el sistema de archivos - para construir un modelo mental de su equipo.

Scratch es un entorno de programación de arrastrar y soltar dirigido a los niños mayores. Se utiliza para crear programas gráficos que manipulan los objetos que representan los coches, pelotas, personas, etc. Los niños son inmediatamente capaces de crear programas sencillos, dirigidos por eventos, y pueden aprender cada vez más complejos programas - incluyendo muchos conceptos de programación como iteración, sentencias condicionales, tipos de datos, etc. Si tienen acceso a la Internet, también pueden compartir sus programas y colaborar con una comunidad mundial que ha compartido más de 4 millones de proyectos.

FrontlineSMS permite configurar un servidor de lista de mensajes SMS para cualquier comunidad de interés común, con independencia de lo que el interés es. Los mensajes se archivan en el servidor y se envían a los miembros de la comunidad. Esto ilustra la idea de un servicio Web y capacita a los jóvenes (o las personas mayores) para establecer comunidades de usuarios en las áreas de su interés y experiencia.

El material didáctico está en línea y usted puede usarlo para enseñarle a sus niños o uso personal. Si lo usa, o si tiene alguna sugerencia por favor háganoslo saber. Si su experiencia ha sido satisfactoria informe a otros usuarios de su existencia.

Electronic commerce in Cuba

A recent Juventud Rebelde post explains what electronic commerce is and gives a few examples of Cuban electronic commerce.

The good news is that there is a spark of interest in the topic.

The sad news is that they feel the need to explain "electronic commerce."

More sad news -- Carlos Lage (and others) pointed out the opportunity cost of restricting the Internet shortly after Cuba connected. In 1997 he said:

One telex can cost twelve dollars [whereas] the same message costs 75 cents in the form of a fax and 3 cents via the Internet ... in spite of our blockaded circumstances, we are in a relatively good position [to face the challenges of such scientific and technological changes], due to the educational and scientific work developed by the revolution.

CNN Video of Cuban Internet access centers

A short CNN news video covers one of the new Internet access centers in Havana (2m 19s).

Ilegal satellite Internet service in Cuba

Alan Gross is in prison for bringing personal satellite equipment into Cuba and a plot to smuggle dishes in disquised as surfing equipment was foiled, but it seems that a clandestine business operating out of Miami has succeded where they failed.

According to articles in the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, the anonymous businessman has sold at least 35 personal satellite systems in Cuba -- for Internet access and low-cost international calls.

The anonymous business man runs a Web page which redirects to a video showing images of dishes, which are presumably in Cuba.

The video, which was uploaded on July 26, 2009 has the following description:

SI NECESITA SERVICIO DE INTERNET EN CUBA LE PODEMOS AYUDAR CON NUESTRA EXPERIENCIA, ALTA VELOCIDAD AL ALCANCE DE SU FAMILIAR, FUNCIONA PARA TODO LLAMADAS VOIP, DESCARGAS, CAMARA, VARIAS PC CONECTADAS,SOMOS LA UNICA ENTIDAD CON EXPERIENCIA PROBADA PARA HACER ESTO EN CUBA, EL SISTEMA INSTALADO ALLA CUESTA 3500$ PAGOS ANTES DE ENVIARLO, PARA MAS INFO 7864431240.

The articles also quote Ricardo Arevalo, general manager of Exede, a company that leases satellite internet equipment, as saying the "number of such systems in Cuba is closer to 300."

These systems are not cheap by Cuban standards -- getting the equipment in and installed costs between $3,500-$4.200, paid in advance in Miami. The bills are generally paid for by families members who live in the US and it seems that the motivation is purely business -- cheap phone calls and Internet access -- not political.

These reports leave me a bit skeptical -- it seems it would be too easy to entrap customers -- but, if these reports are for real, Alan Gross and USAID could have saved a lot of the taxpayer's money and Gross could be a free man.

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Update 11/10/2014

The video this post linked to was taken down. I've revised the video link and it works at least for now. I also tried to contact the installation company, but they did not reply to an email or call.

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Update 6/13/2015

Before HughesNet stopped servicing them, this post estimated that there were 30,000 illegal satellite dishes in Cuba. If that estimate is even remotely accurate, it makes what Alan Gross was trying to do look very small indeed.

Presumably, HughesNet cut their Cuban users off because they feared US government sanctions, but the government has now indemnified US companies against such sanctions. I believe HughesNet provides connectivity to many of the embassies in Cuba and I wonder if they would now be willing to resume servicing those illegal accounts.

I also wonder whether the Cuban government would allow a pilot test of satellite connectivity to a trusted site like a rural school or Youth Computer Club. I don't even wonder whether they would allow retail satellite links, but wouldn't that be nice?

Mobile expansion

In June, ETECSA predicted that there would be two million mobile subscribers by the end of the year. One step in that direction was the recent expansion of mobile coverage in Las Tunas, where they expect over 50,000 mobile phones by the end of this year and will add more base stations in 2014. Eighty percent of the province now has mobile coverage.

Cuba has historically invested more outside of the capital than most developing nations, and It is good to see resources being devoted to locations in the provinces, but, as far as I know, there is no support for smart phones -- is that the case?

Resources for young, Spanish speaking nerds and their teachers

My daughter and I are putting together a collection of Spanish language teaching material aimed at young people. We are focusing on three programs -- Tuxpaint, Scratch and FrontlineSMS.

• Tuxpaint is a drawing program aimed at grade school kids -- it has all sorts of tools like stamps and transformations that let them quickly draw complex pictures. It also makes neat sound effects as they draw. Little kids learn it easily, and in doing so, they develop dexterity and learn to navigate the operating system and file system -- to build a mental model of their computer.
• Scratch is a drag-and-drop programming environment aimed at junior high and older kids. It is used to create graphical programs which manipulate objects representing cars, balls, people, etc. Kids are able to create simple, event-driven programs immediately, and can move on to increasingly complex programs -- introducing many programming concepts like iteration, conditional statements, data types, etc. If they have Internet access, they can also share their programs and collaborate with a worldwide community that has shared over 4 million projects.
• FrontlineSMS allows one to set up an SMS message list server for any community of common interest, regardless of what that interest is. Messages are archived on the server and forwarded to community members. This illustrates the idea of a Web service and empowers youth (or older people) to establish user communities in areas of their interest and expertise.

The teaching material is online and you are free to use it to teach kids or to learn on your own. If you use it or have suggestions for additions, improvements or others who would like to use it, please let us know. Also let other people know.

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Update 9/26/2014

Code.org has translated their one-hour introduction to programming course into Spanish. The 20-lesson course introduces sequential execution, loops and conditionals using a subset of the Scratch programming language. There is a lot more material in Spanish if the student wants to continue.

Everyman meets a copyright radical

(In the interests of balance: Everyman learns respect for copyright)
 

Everyman: Nice set of stickers you have there.

Copyright Radical: Glad you like them. Down with the Copyright Fascists!

E: Excuse me?

RadiC: Just practising. Day of Action tomorrow.

E: About copyright?

RadiC: Knowledge is a common resource. Defend the public domain. Preserve the commons.  Freedom is sharing.  Copyright enslaves us.

E: Seemed like a voluntary exchange when I paid for my books.

RadiC:  Information wants to be free.  Copyright bars the way. 

E: Information isn’t free. Movies don’t get made for nothing. 

RadiC: Free as in speech, not free as in beer. 

E: Doesn’t change anything.  Who will make movies if anyone can copy the product?

RadiC: Paintings came before copyright.

E: When mass copying was impossible.

RadiC: So when copying was expensive, the investment to do it had to be protected.  Now it costs nothing, copying has to be stopped?

E: Aren’t you ignoring public goods? 

RadiC:  On the contrary. Knowledge is a public good.

E: That sounds bad.

RadiC:  How so?

E: This economics textbook says that consumption of a public good is non-rivalrous and non-excludable.  So an unlimited number of people can take a free ride on the author’s creative investment.  That leads to underproduction of creative works.

RadiC: You can prove anything with economics.

E: The book says that copyright addresses the free rider problem by introducing excludability. It creates the possibility of a functioning market.

RadiC: So we end up with big business controlling knowledge. 

E: Not a dynamic marketplace of ideas?

RadiC: Don’t be ridiculous.

E: Isn’t the alternative worse?

RadiC: Knowledge as the commons. Sounds fine to me.

E: If public goods are underproduced, next thing you have the State stepping in to correct market failure.

RadiC: Collective democratic action.

E: A State-sponsored representative elite controlling the creative commons in the interest of the voter coalitions whose interests it serves.  What’s free - as in speech - about that?

RadiC: You’d rather have unaccountable monopoly US corporations?

E: What the State controls the State rations, including knowledge.  Especially knowledge.

RadiC: This is about copyright, not the State controlling speech.

E: Shouldn’t we just try to have the right amount of copyright? Not too little, not too much.

RadiC: ‘Goldilocks Copyright Now!’ Remind me to make a sticker.  

Everyman learns respect for copyright

(In the interests of balance: Everyman meets a copyright radical)

Maximus Copyright: Hey, you!

Everyman: Me?

MaxC: What do you think you’re doing?

E:  I’m reading this interesting little blog about IT and internet law.

MaxC: You got permission to do that?

E: Who from?

MaxC: Me.  Or the Family.

E: They are?

MaxC: Relations and neighbours.

E: Nice to meet you all.

The Family: Thief! Thief! Thief!

E: What’s this about?

MaxC: This is my patch.  You’re on it.  Pay or get off.

E: I’m only looking.

MaxC: That’s using. Needs permission. Or should do¹.

E: But there are paths.  They say Public Right of Way.

MaxC: You see the TPMs?

E: I'm guessing that's the barbed wire.

MaxC: Right. Illegal to cut it.

E: Is there anything I can do around here that isn't illegal?

MaxC: You've got to learn respect. People these days don't show the respect due to the Family. How did you find this place, anyway?

E: That link. It’s marked.

MaxC: This is serious.  An unlicensed link². Take it down, boys.

The Family: Thief! Thief! Thief!

E: Who’s that over there? You haven’t introduced her.

MaxC: Minima.  She’s the other branch of the family.  We don’t speak.

E: No?

MaxC: They have crazy ideas. Balance, proportionality, reasonable expectations of users.  "The Family will get respect if it gives up some land".  Morons.  I tell you how we get respect, by strong enforcement.

E: Not by education, then?

MaxC: Education of course.  But it has to be the right sort of education.

E: The right sort?

MaxC: The sort that fosters respect. We like to keep it simple. ‘Don’t steal, don’t copy’.  That sort of thing.  If you don’t get the message, something more graduated.  If you still don’t get it, we chop your internet off.

E: Mine?

MaxC: You just keep your nose clean and there won’t be any trouble.

E: I had my nose in this blog until you showed up.

MaxC: Don’t get clever.

E: There’s something I don’t understand about all this.

MaxC: What?

E: If everything needs permission, won't everyone end up breaking the law? How does that foster respect for copyright?

MaxC: You’re starting to sound like cousin Mini and that Hargreaves character she hangs around with.  You need to be educated.

E: How, without any internet access?

MaxC: That's enough. Re-education camp for you.

E: Huh?

MaxC: You'll love it.  The tutors all love copyright. The guards all love copyright. It will be a better world when we all love copyright.

The Family: Take him away! 

Notes:

1.The question of whether merely browsing a copyright work online requires the permission of the copyright owner is currently the subject of a reference to the EU Court of Justice in Newspaper Licensing Agency v PRCA.  The view of the UK Supreme Court was that it should not require permission, in the same way that reading a physical book does not – even if the book is an infringing copy. However the browsing point was of sufficient importance that it should be considered by the CJEU.

2.  The question whether a web link to a copyright work on the internet requires the permission of the copyright owner is currently the subject of references to the EU Court of Justice in Svensson, CMore and Bestwater.

Eliécer Ávila and Operation Truth -- who is on the payroll?

Freedom House issues an annual report on freedom on the Internet. This year they rated 60 nations and Iran was the only nation rated as less free than Cuba.

One of the factors they consider in their ranking is the use of pro-government commentators to manipulate online discussions. We have learned of the extent of that activity from Eliécer Ávila.

In 2007 Ávila was a student at the prestigious University of Computer Sciences of Cuba (UCI), where he asked some embarrassing questions of Ricardo Alarcón, then President of the Cuban National Assembly. Ávila asked about travel and hotel restrictions, the economy, government transparency and the Internet.

(You can see video of the exchange between Ávila and Alarcón here. Ávila's remarks on the Internet begin at the 15:25 point).

While that video received considerable attention at the time, it is not as intersting to me as a conversation this year between Ávila and Yoani Sánchez. (An English language transcript is available here).

Ávila describes Operation Truth, which he worked on while a student at UCI. He outlines the scope and organization of the project -- a thousand students are active in social networks, where they write posts favoring the government and work as "trolls," disrupting discussion and attacking those who question the government.

This leads me to be a little paranoid -- wondering who might be on the Operation Truth payroll. One person who comes to mind is Walter Lippmann, who founded and moderates CubaNews, a Yahoo Group.

When I started this blog, I discovered CubaNews and joined the group. I posted a few things, including a link to a report I had written on the state of the Internet in Cuba. Walter commented on my posts -- arguing and changing the subject -- like a troll. Nevertheless, when I posted something on this blog, I also sent a link to the CubaNews group.

Those links also generated rambling disagreement from Walter, and finally, he stopped sharing my submissions. For a while, he posted trollish comments on my posts on this blog, but, after I replied pointing out that I posted his comments, while he censored me, he stopped. I have no way of knowing whether Walter is subsidized by the Cuban Government or anyone else, but his censorship and argument tactics make me wonder.

Do you know of others who might be Operation Truth trolls?

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Update 10/0/2013

In an attempt to identify government-connected bloggers, dissident brothers, Luis Enrique and José Daniel Ferrer planted a fake story in a phone conversation that they assumed would be tapped. Read about it here. While it is possible that those who published or knew about the fake news could have heard it from others, it is clear that the brother's phone call was monitored.