Interesting Times: Israel Takes the Bait : The New Yorker: "June 1, 2010
Israel Takes the Bait
Posted by George Packer
gaza_opt.jpg
The Israeli raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza was worse than a crime, it was a blunder. None of the extenuating qualifications raised by its defenders matters—that the death toll was lower than on an average day in Lahore or Mosul; or that the relief ship carried (in addition to an Irish Nobel laureate, a Holocaust survivor, and a best-selling Swedish novelist) a lot of Turkish Islamists who were ready for a fight; or that Hamas is at least as much to blame for the suffering in Gaza as Israel. The point-counterpoint in blogs and U.N. deliberations misses the realm where the meaning of this raid is playing out. The purpose of the convoy was not primarily to bring aid to desperate Gazans, but to call attention to the Israeli blockade and turn world opinion overwhelmingly against it—as Greta Berlin, a leader of the Free Gaza Movement, made clear before the ships set sail. By this standard, the incident could not have gone better.
The flotilla was bait, and Israel took it—a classic triumph of civil disobedience over state power. So it doesn’t really matter that the “humanitarians” on the ship immediately resorted to violence: what the world will remember is that Israel’s first impulse was direct confrontation with civilians bringing aid, regardless of the effects on either the ship’s passengers or its own reputation. This revealed a greater moral obtuseness than firing missiles into civilian areas in the middle of a war. It’s not always the bloodiest incidents that evoke the strongest reaction and bring the most lasting consequences. No one remembers that the death toll was zero during the May, 1963, civil-rights demonstrations in Birmingham. What everyone knows is that Bull Connor brought in the K-9 units and firehoses. King and his circle got the images they badly needed, the nation recoiled, and the tide turned for the civil-rights movement.
Sunday night’s incident showed again that the most powerful force in international relations today is neither standing armies nor diplomatic councils, but public opinion as shaped by media. The presence of an Al Jazeera crew on one ship proves that the pro-Gazans understand completely the main arena in which they’re operating. The American military learned this truth slowly and the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one else cared if it was insurgents dressed as ordinary men who triggered an attack; what always shaped the world’s judgment was footage of soldiers retaliating with overwhelming firepower. (The recent WikiLeaks video is a good example; Raffi Khatchadourian has more about WikiLeaks this week in the magazine.) For years, the military would release self-justifying (and often misleading) statements that only inflamed opinion and strengthened the hand of the insurgents. Over time, American soldiers learned that they had to care what the world—especially Iraqis and Afghans—thought. They started trying harder to avoid such incidents, and, when that failed, to control their effect by owning up faster to their own responsibility.
At one time, Israelis understood counterinsurgency much better than Americans, which is why U.S. officers looked to their Israeli counterparts for advice in the early years of the Iraq war. At one time, the Israelis understood that self-interest demanded subtlety, restraint, and attention to perception. As others have pointed out, these qualities have been disappearing from Israeli strategy and tactics, and the current right-wing government seems determined to isolate and destroy itself with the unbending principle of self-defense.
One more thought, about what the incident means for Obama’s foreign policy. His national-security strategy, released last week, is a perfectly good document—almost too unobjectionable in its laundry list of goals and its lack of priorities. But Israel’s attack on the convoy shows an essential weakness in Obama’s vision of international affairs. The document has a lot to say about threats and military superiority, but its emphasis is on coöperation. Obama’s strategy of engagement is based on the notion that America, its allies, and its opponents have certain mutual interests that self-interest will lead them to identify and embrace. This notion has not been borne out with Iran, where the rulers of the Islamic Republic believe that self-interest—their own survival—depends on a climate of perpetual crisis and permanent demonization of the U.S. and Israel. And it hasn’t been borne out with Israel, which has just acted in a way that blurs self-interest into suicide.
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Thursday, June 3, 2010
The Madoff Circle: Who Knew What? - ProPublica
The Madoff Circle: Who Knew What? - ProPublica: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
The Madoff Circle: Who Knew What?
by Jake Bernstein, ProPublica - June 2, 2010 2:40 pm EDT
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A Bernard Madoff New York Mets baseball jacket is displayed during a U.S. Marshals Service auction of personal property seized from Bernard and Ruth Madoff on Nov. 13, 2009 in New York City. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
When Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, he insisted he was the lone perpetrator, asserting that no one – not his family, not his colleagues, not his friends – knew of the fraud.
But an alternate narrative is emerging from the pile of Madoff-related civil suits and court motions that have been filed in the last two years – one in which a small circle of men played knowing, integral roles in the scheme, in some cases benefiting more from it than even Madoff himself.
The evidence for this remains largely circumstantial. These relationships were forged in the days before e-mail, and none of the cases has yet produced anything for public consumption that delivers insights into what these men were thinking. In the one instance in which a judge has ruled on allegations against some of the men, he dismissed the charges for lack of evidence.
But the men’s actions, as described in the court cases, appear to have furthered the scheme. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the trustee charged with recovering money for Madoff’s victims have alleged that some of the men had expectations and influence far beyond what is typical for the usual investor. Most tellingly, the documents say that in at least one instance, and possibly more, these men helped keep the Madoff scam afloat, providing hundreds of millions of dollars of cash when it was on the verge of collapsing.
If this was a conspiracy – and the available information is by no means complete – it does not seem to have been one in which the perpetrators plotted together around a tavern table. Irving Picard, the trustee, has sued several of Madoff’s biggest beneficiaries, alleging they “knew or willfully ignored” that they were participating in a fraud. The suits are silent on the question of whether those involved coordinated or knew of one another’s activities, but they don’t need to demonstrate that to be successful.
Bernie Madoff
His scheme is alleged to have been helped by wealthy investors who "knew or willfully ignored" signs that it was a fraud.
Jeffry Picower, 67
This lawyer, accountant, and noted philanthropist is alleged to have reaped the most from Madoff's scheme – $7.2 billion. He died recently of a heart attack.
Carl Shapiro, 97
A Boston-based philanthropist who made a fortune in ladies fashion and allegedly as much as $1 billion from Madoff.
Stanley Chais, 83
A close Madoff friend for more than 50 years. He and his family are alleged to have withdrawn approximately $200 million more than they invested with Madoff.
Robert Jaffe, 66
Shapiro's son-in-law is believed to have funneled more than $1 billion of investor money to Madoff.
Maurice Cohn, 79
Madoff's former neighbor and business partner, he worked with Jaffe at a business called Cohmad, which allegedly did little else for investors beyond sending money to Madoff.
What these men undeniably shared were similar backgrounds and interests. Based largely in New York and South Florida, they moved through parallel milieus of affluent Jewish country clubs and synagogues. They were active in similar philanthropies and served on the boards of foundations, universities and yeshivas.
The cast of characters, spelled out mostly in complaints filed by the trustee and the SEC, includes: Carl Shapiro, [1] 97, a Boston-based philanthropist who made one fortune in ladies dresses and a larger one with Madoff; Robert Jaffe [2], 66, Shapiro’s son-in-law; Maurice “Sonny” Cohn, 79, a one-time Madoff neighbor turned business partner; Stanley Chais [3], 83, a close friend of Madoff’s for more than 50 years and one of his earliest investors; and Jeffry Picower [4], a lawyer and accountant, who recently died of a heart attack at 67.
None of these men has been charged criminally. Thus far, federal authorities have indicated in court filings that just one of them – Chais – is the subject of a criminal inquiry. A year ago, The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, reported that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan was investigating at least eight investors, including Picower, Chais and Shapiro [5].
All have denied being anything but victims of Madoff’s [6].
Chais, Cohn and Jaffe have drawn considerable ire from investors for running so-called feeder funds that channeled huge sums into Madoff’s investment business. Jaffe alone funneled more than $1 billion of investor money to Madoff, according to the SEC. He worked with Cohn in a business called Cohmad – a contraction of Cohn and Madoff – that operated out of Madoff’s offices. Contrary to what some investors in the funds believed, it appears the men did little to manage the money beyond simply collecting it for delivery to Madoff.
Members of this circle not only did far better than other investors, who averaged 10 percent to 12 percent returns annually, they also had a highly unusual level of input into the nature of their returns.
According to the trustee’s complaint, there were several instances in which Picower or his associates contacted Madoff’s office, asking for specific monthly returns [7]. Over a five-year period in the late ’90s, two of Picower’s accounts [8] had annual returns ranging between 120 percent and 550 percent. A third had yearly returns as high as 950 percent.
Chais and his family consistently received yearly returns higher than 100 percent, far exceeding the gains realized by investors in his funds. Moreover, according to an SEC complaint [9], when Madoff told Chais he was switching to a new strategy that might show occasional short-term trading losses without interfering with net gains, Chais made a special demand to maintain the appearance of loss-free investments.
“Chais told Madoff that he did not want there to be any losses in any of [his] Fund’s trades,” the SEC complaint alleges [9]. “Madoff complied with Chais’ request. Between 1999 and 2008, despite purportedly executing thousands of trades on behalf of the Funds, Madoff did not report a loss on a single equities trade.”
Chais disputes the allegations [9], and his lawyer characterized the SEC’s complaint in a statement as “a distorted and false picture of Stanley Chais.”
“Like so many others, Mr. Chais was blindsided and victimized by Bernard Madoff’s unprecedented and pervasive fraud,” the statement said. “Mr. Chais and his family have lost virtually everything – an impossible result were he involved in the underlying fraud.”
Many of those in the circle took money from the scheme as fees rather than investment gains.
Cohmad officials reaped a total of $98.4 million in payments between 1996 and 2008, most of it labeled income from “account supervision,” according to the SEC [10].
Chais charged fees equal to 25 percent of each Chais fund’s net profit for calendar years in which profits exceeded 10 percent, according to the trustee. As profits exceeded 10 percent every year, Chais took in almost $270 million in fees from 1995 to 2008.
Though Madoff receives the lion’s share of the blame and/or credit for his scheme, it appears that several of his close associates profited more handsomely than he did. Shortly after he confessed, Madoff declared in court documents that his household net worth was about $825 million.
Picower, the biggest beneficiary of the scheme by far, took in $7.2 billion in profit, according to the trustee. Picower’s widow and the trustee are currently haggling over the exact amount of a multibillion-dollar settlement. Carl Shapiro and his family received more than $1 billion, the trustee charged in a court document filed last November in U. S. Bankruptcy Court.
Chais and his family members withdrew approximately $200 million more than they invested with Madoff, according to the SEC. This came on top of the hundreds of millions in fees Chais charged investors.
Chais’ lawyer denied that his client had any knowledge of the Ponzi scheme or that he had raked in the vast riches alleged. “Despite the astronomical numbers mentioned by the Trustee in his complaint, the bulk of the funds alleged to have been distributed to Mr. Chais were in fact distributed to his investors,” his statement said.
At key moments, Madoff’s investors came to the rescue to keep the scheme going. The first instance came in 1992, when the SEC shut down a feeder fund run by the accountants Frank Avellino and Michael Bienes, then Madoff’s largest, accusing the pair of operating a Ponzi scheme. Avellino and Bienes admitted they had acted as unregistered investment managers, but insisted the money had been invested with Madoff, who promptly returned more than $300 million.
Ironically, the SEC mistook Madoff’s ability to raise that amount so quickly as proof that his business was legitimate and “the money was where we [the agency] would expect it to be,” a staff attorney told the SEC’s inspector general last year. Almost two decades later, investigators suspect Madoff may have tapped his circle to collect the cash while scrambling, with the help of his right-hand man, Frank DiPascali, to fabricate trading records, a scene detailed in the agency’s case against DiPascali.
Identifying precisely who helped Madoff repay Avellino and Bienes’ investors is currently an area of inquiry for law enforcement, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
Despite his ever-growing network of feeder funds, Madoff had another liquidity crisis in November 2005. According to a federal complaint [11] filed against his employee Daniel Bonventre, Madoff’s investor account had an end-of-day balance of about $13 million to cover about $105 million in wires scheduled to go out over the next three days.
Two days later, one of Madoff’s investors, identified in the complaint [11] as “Client A,” sent about $100 million in bonds to Madoff, which he used as collateral to secure a $95 million bank loan to continue the Ponzi scheme. The following January, Client A gave Madoff $54 million more in bonds, which were used as collateral for a $50 million loan.
Investigators have not revealed the identity of Client A, but a person close to the investigation said he was among Madoff’s group of longtime close associates.
The final bailout came toward the end of 2008, when Madoff was hit with a tidal wave of redemption requests from investors caught up in the larger financial crisis. Toward the end of 2008, he looked to Shapiro, who pitched in $250 million.
Shapiro and his family have said repeatedly through spokesmen that they were unaware of the true nature of Madoff’s business. The spokesman declined to comment on the $250 million.
No civil or criminal complaints have been filed against Shapiro, but a court filing by the trustee raised questions about the nonagenarian’s “contentions that he is a victim of Madoff’s scheme,” alleging “inconsistencies between Mr. Shapiro’s counsel’s account of the family history with Madoff and the records available to the Trustee.” The trustee is negotiating with the family to recover profits made over the years.
The emergency cash infusion failed. Just 10 days later, Madoff says he confessed to his sons that “it’s all just one big lie,” finally ending the scheme.
So far, efforts to hold Madoff associates accountable have met with mixed results.
Civil claims by the SEC [10] against Jaffe, Cohmad and Cohn were largely rejected by Federal District Judge Louis Stanton, who ruled in February that the agency had failed to prove they “knew of, or recklessly disregarded, Madoff’s fraud.” The judge left the door open for the SEC to refile its complaint by June 18, if it can strengthen its case.
Lawyers for Maurice Cohn and Cohmad released the following statement in response to the ruling: “As we have maintained all along and Judge Stanton agrees, the SEC's complaint supports nothing other than "the reasonable inference that Madoff fooled the defendants as he did individual investors, financial institutions and regulators."
If there were others involved in the Ponzi scheme, building federal or state criminal cases against Madoff’s circle may prove difficult. Though their relationships go back decades, most of their dealings were done verbally, and there isn’t a lot of correspondence, according to a person with knowledge of the investigations. Federal investigators are working with DiPascali to get a clearer picture of the degree of complicity of others in the scheme.
Illness and age also may become factors. Though a grand jury could consider charges against Chais by mid-June, he suffers from a rare blood disorder and is in and out of the hospital. Shapiro, too, is said to be in ill health.
The trustee is expected to file more lawsuits in coming months as the date approaches when the statute of limitations runs out.
Criminal cases brought against several former Madoff employees have already eroded the notion, lodged so powerfully in the public imagination, that Madoff worked alone, said Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School and a former prosecutor. With each additional case, he said, it may well crumble further.
“I imagine the paradigmatic Ponzi scheme with the evil genius who keeps all the secrets to himself and engineers this massive crime, like most stick figures, will probably not hold true,” he said.
Write to Jake Bernstein at Jake.Bernstein@propublica.org [12].
Want to know more? Follow ProPublica on Facebook [13] and Twitter [14], and get ProPublica headlines delivered by e-mail every day [15].
The Madoff Circle: Who Knew What?
by Jake Bernstein, ProPublica - June 2, 2010 2:40 pm EDT
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A Bernard Madoff New York Mets baseball jacket is displayed during a U.S. Marshals Service auction of personal property seized from Bernard and Ruth Madoff on Nov. 13, 2009 in New York City. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
When Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, he insisted he was the lone perpetrator, asserting that no one – not his family, not his colleagues, not his friends – knew of the fraud.
But an alternate narrative is emerging from the pile of Madoff-related civil suits and court motions that have been filed in the last two years – one in which a small circle of men played knowing, integral roles in the scheme, in some cases benefiting more from it than even Madoff himself.
The evidence for this remains largely circumstantial. These relationships were forged in the days before e-mail, and none of the cases has yet produced anything for public consumption that delivers insights into what these men were thinking. In the one instance in which a judge has ruled on allegations against some of the men, he dismissed the charges for lack of evidence.
But the men’s actions, as described in the court cases, appear to have furthered the scheme. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the trustee charged with recovering money for Madoff’s victims have alleged that some of the men had expectations and influence far beyond what is typical for the usual investor. Most tellingly, the documents say that in at least one instance, and possibly more, these men helped keep the Madoff scam afloat, providing hundreds of millions of dollars of cash when it was on the verge of collapsing.
If this was a conspiracy – and the available information is by no means complete – it does not seem to have been one in which the perpetrators plotted together around a tavern table. Irving Picard, the trustee, has sued several of Madoff’s biggest beneficiaries, alleging they “knew or willfully ignored” that they were participating in a fraud. The suits are silent on the question of whether those involved coordinated or knew of one another’s activities, but they don’t need to demonstrate that to be successful.
Bernie Madoff
His scheme is alleged to have been helped by wealthy investors who "knew or willfully ignored" signs that it was a fraud.
Jeffry Picower, 67
This lawyer, accountant, and noted philanthropist is alleged to have reaped the most from Madoff's scheme – $7.2 billion. He died recently of a heart attack.
Carl Shapiro, 97
A Boston-based philanthropist who made a fortune in ladies fashion and allegedly as much as $1 billion from Madoff.
Stanley Chais, 83
A close Madoff friend for more than 50 years. He and his family are alleged to have withdrawn approximately $200 million more than they invested with Madoff.
Robert Jaffe, 66
Shapiro's son-in-law is believed to have funneled more than $1 billion of investor money to Madoff.
Maurice Cohn, 79
Madoff's former neighbor and business partner, he worked with Jaffe at a business called Cohmad, which allegedly did little else for investors beyond sending money to Madoff.
What these men undeniably shared were similar backgrounds and interests. Based largely in New York and South Florida, they moved through parallel milieus of affluent Jewish country clubs and synagogues. They were active in similar philanthropies and served on the boards of foundations, universities and yeshivas.
The cast of characters, spelled out mostly in complaints filed by the trustee and the SEC, includes: Carl Shapiro, [1] 97, a Boston-based philanthropist who made one fortune in ladies dresses and a larger one with Madoff; Robert Jaffe [2], 66, Shapiro’s son-in-law; Maurice “Sonny” Cohn, 79, a one-time Madoff neighbor turned business partner; Stanley Chais [3], 83, a close friend of Madoff’s for more than 50 years and one of his earliest investors; and Jeffry Picower [4], a lawyer and accountant, who recently died of a heart attack at 67.
None of these men has been charged criminally. Thus far, federal authorities have indicated in court filings that just one of them – Chais – is the subject of a criminal inquiry. A year ago, The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, reported that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan was investigating at least eight investors, including Picower, Chais and Shapiro [5].
All have denied being anything but victims of Madoff’s [6].
Chais, Cohn and Jaffe have drawn considerable ire from investors for running so-called feeder funds that channeled huge sums into Madoff’s investment business. Jaffe alone funneled more than $1 billion of investor money to Madoff, according to the SEC. He worked with Cohn in a business called Cohmad – a contraction of Cohn and Madoff – that operated out of Madoff’s offices. Contrary to what some investors in the funds believed, it appears the men did little to manage the money beyond simply collecting it for delivery to Madoff.
Members of this circle not only did far better than other investors, who averaged 10 percent to 12 percent returns annually, they also had a highly unusual level of input into the nature of their returns.
According to the trustee’s complaint, there were several instances in which Picower or his associates contacted Madoff’s office, asking for specific monthly returns [7]. Over a five-year period in the late ’90s, two of Picower’s accounts [8] had annual returns ranging between 120 percent and 550 percent. A third had yearly returns as high as 950 percent.
Chais and his family consistently received yearly returns higher than 100 percent, far exceeding the gains realized by investors in his funds. Moreover, according to an SEC complaint [9], when Madoff told Chais he was switching to a new strategy that might show occasional short-term trading losses without interfering with net gains, Chais made a special demand to maintain the appearance of loss-free investments.
“Chais told Madoff that he did not want there to be any losses in any of [his] Fund’s trades,” the SEC complaint alleges [9]. “Madoff complied with Chais’ request. Between 1999 and 2008, despite purportedly executing thousands of trades on behalf of the Funds, Madoff did not report a loss on a single equities trade.”
Chais disputes the allegations [9], and his lawyer characterized the SEC’s complaint in a statement as “a distorted and false picture of Stanley Chais.”
“Like so many others, Mr. Chais was blindsided and victimized by Bernard Madoff’s unprecedented and pervasive fraud,” the statement said. “Mr. Chais and his family have lost virtually everything – an impossible result were he involved in the underlying fraud.”
Many of those in the circle took money from the scheme as fees rather than investment gains.
Cohmad officials reaped a total of $98.4 million in payments between 1996 and 2008, most of it labeled income from “account supervision,” according to the SEC [10].
Chais charged fees equal to 25 percent of each Chais fund’s net profit for calendar years in which profits exceeded 10 percent, according to the trustee. As profits exceeded 10 percent every year, Chais took in almost $270 million in fees from 1995 to 2008.
Though Madoff receives the lion’s share of the blame and/or credit for his scheme, it appears that several of his close associates profited more handsomely than he did. Shortly after he confessed, Madoff declared in court documents that his household net worth was about $825 million.
Picower, the biggest beneficiary of the scheme by far, took in $7.2 billion in profit, according to the trustee. Picower’s widow and the trustee are currently haggling over the exact amount of a multibillion-dollar settlement. Carl Shapiro and his family received more than $1 billion, the trustee charged in a court document filed last November in U. S. Bankruptcy Court.
Chais and his family members withdrew approximately $200 million more than they invested with Madoff, according to the SEC. This came on top of the hundreds of millions in fees Chais charged investors.
Chais’ lawyer denied that his client had any knowledge of the Ponzi scheme or that he had raked in the vast riches alleged. “Despite the astronomical numbers mentioned by the Trustee in his complaint, the bulk of the funds alleged to have been distributed to Mr. Chais were in fact distributed to his investors,” his statement said.
At key moments, Madoff’s investors came to the rescue to keep the scheme going. The first instance came in 1992, when the SEC shut down a feeder fund run by the accountants Frank Avellino and Michael Bienes, then Madoff’s largest, accusing the pair of operating a Ponzi scheme. Avellino and Bienes admitted they had acted as unregistered investment managers, but insisted the money had been invested with Madoff, who promptly returned more than $300 million.
Ironically, the SEC mistook Madoff’s ability to raise that amount so quickly as proof that his business was legitimate and “the money was where we [the agency] would expect it to be,” a staff attorney told the SEC’s inspector general last year. Almost two decades later, investigators suspect Madoff may have tapped his circle to collect the cash while scrambling, with the help of his right-hand man, Frank DiPascali, to fabricate trading records, a scene detailed in the agency’s case against DiPascali.
Identifying precisely who helped Madoff repay Avellino and Bienes’ investors is currently an area of inquiry for law enforcement, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
Despite his ever-growing network of feeder funds, Madoff had another liquidity crisis in November 2005. According to a federal complaint [11] filed against his employee Daniel Bonventre, Madoff’s investor account had an end-of-day balance of about $13 million to cover about $105 million in wires scheduled to go out over the next three days.
Two days later, one of Madoff’s investors, identified in the complaint [11] as “Client A,” sent about $100 million in bonds to Madoff, which he used as collateral to secure a $95 million bank loan to continue the Ponzi scheme. The following January, Client A gave Madoff $54 million more in bonds, which were used as collateral for a $50 million loan.
Investigators have not revealed the identity of Client A, but a person close to the investigation said he was among Madoff’s group of longtime close associates.
The final bailout came toward the end of 2008, when Madoff was hit with a tidal wave of redemption requests from investors caught up in the larger financial crisis. Toward the end of 2008, he looked to Shapiro, who pitched in $250 million.
Shapiro and his family have said repeatedly through spokesmen that they were unaware of the true nature of Madoff’s business. The spokesman declined to comment on the $250 million.
No civil or criminal complaints have been filed against Shapiro, but a court filing by the trustee raised questions about the nonagenarian’s “contentions that he is a victim of Madoff’s scheme,” alleging “inconsistencies between Mr. Shapiro’s counsel’s account of the family history with Madoff and the records available to the Trustee.” The trustee is negotiating with the family to recover profits made over the years.
The emergency cash infusion failed. Just 10 days later, Madoff says he confessed to his sons that “it’s all just one big lie,” finally ending the scheme.
So far, efforts to hold Madoff associates accountable have met with mixed results.
Civil claims by the SEC [10] against Jaffe, Cohmad and Cohn were largely rejected by Federal District Judge Louis Stanton, who ruled in February that the agency had failed to prove they “knew of, or recklessly disregarded, Madoff’s fraud.” The judge left the door open for the SEC to refile its complaint by June 18, if it can strengthen its case.
Lawyers for Maurice Cohn and Cohmad released the following statement in response to the ruling: “As we have maintained all along and Judge Stanton agrees, the SEC's complaint supports nothing other than "the reasonable inference that Madoff fooled the defendants as he did individual investors, financial institutions and regulators."
If there were others involved in the Ponzi scheme, building federal or state criminal cases against Madoff’s circle may prove difficult. Though their relationships go back decades, most of their dealings were done verbally, and there isn’t a lot of correspondence, according to a person with knowledge of the investigations. Federal investigators are working with DiPascali to get a clearer picture of the degree of complicity of others in the scheme.
Illness and age also may become factors. Though a grand jury could consider charges against Chais by mid-June, he suffers from a rare blood disorder and is in and out of the hospital. Shapiro, too, is said to be in ill health.
The trustee is expected to file more lawsuits in coming months as the date approaches when the statute of limitations runs out.
Criminal cases brought against several former Madoff employees have already eroded the notion, lodged so powerfully in the public imagination, that Madoff worked alone, said Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School and a former prosecutor. With each additional case, he said, it may well crumble further.
“I imagine the paradigmatic Ponzi scheme with the evil genius who keeps all the secrets to himself and engineers this massive crime, like most stick figures, will probably not hold true,” he said.
Write to Jake Bernstein at Jake.Bernstein@propublica.org [12].
Want to know more? Follow ProPublica on Facebook [13] and Twitter [14], and get ProPublica headlines delivered by e-mail every day [15].
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Videogames train you for lucid dreaming? - Boing Boing
Videogames train you for lucid dreaming? - Boing Boing: "Videogames train you for lucid dreaming?
David Pescovitz at 8:52 AM Friday, May 28, 2010
Images Salvador-Dali-The-Dream1
Can playing videogames train you as a lucid dreamer? Psychologist Jayne Gackenbach thinks so, according to work she presented at this week's Games for Health Conference in Boston. For several years, Gackenbach, a researcher at Grant MacEwan University, studied similarities in skills between gamers and individuals who have learned to control their dreams. She also looked at how videogame-play seemed to affect nightmares. From LiveScience (painting is Salvador Dali's 'The Dream'):
'If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice,' said Gackenbach. 'Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams....'
Finding awareness and some level of control in gamer dreams was one thing. But Gackenbach also wondered if video games affected nightmares, based on the 'threat simulation' theory proposed by Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo. Revonsuo suggested that dreams might mimic threatening situations from real life, except in the safe environment of dream world. Such nightmares would help organisms hone their avoidance skills in a protective environment, and ideally prepare organisms for a real-life situation.
To test that theory, Gackenbach conducted a 2008 study with 35 males and 63 females, and used independent assessments that coded threat levels in after-dream reports. She found that gamers experienced less or even reversed threat simulation (in which the dreamer became the threatening presence), with fewer aggression dreams overall. In other words, a scary nightmare scenario turned into something 'fun' for a gamer.
'What happens with gamers is that something inexplicable happens,' Gackenbach explained. 'They don't run away, they turn and fight back. They're more aggressive than the norms.'
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
David Pescovitz at 8:52 AM Friday, May 28, 2010
Images Salvador-Dali-The-Dream1
Can playing videogames train you as a lucid dreamer? Psychologist Jayne Gackenbach thinks so, according to work she presented at this week's Games for Health Conference in Boston. For several years, Gackenbach, a researcher at Grant MacEwan University, studied similarities in skills between gamers and individuals who have learned to control their dreams. She also looked at how videogame-play seemed to affect nightmares. From LiveScience (painting is Salvador Dali's 'The Dream'):
'If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice,' said Gackenbach. 'Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams....'
Finding awareness and some level of control in gamer dreams was one thing. But Gackenbach also wondered if video games affected nightmares, based on the 'threat simulation' theory proposed by Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo. Revonsuo suggested that dreams might mimic threatening situations from real life, except in the safe environment of dream world. Such nightmares would help organisms hone their avoidance skills in a protective environment, and ideally prepare organisms for a real-life situation.
To test that theory, Gackenbach conducted a 2008 study with 35 males and 63 females, and used independent assessments that coded threat levels in after-dream reports. She found that gamers experienced less or even reversed threat simulation (in which the dreamer became the threatening presence), with fewer aggression dreams overall. In other words, a scary nightmare scenario turned into something 'fun' for a gamer.
'What happens with gamers is that something inexplicable happens,' Gackenbach explained. 'They don't run away, they turn and fight back. They're more aggressive than the norms.'
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Tarvuism - The official international internet website for the Tarvuist faith
Tarvuism - The official international internet website for the Tarvuist faith: "Join Us!
Thousands of people just like you are becoming Tarvuists every day. Now's your turn. Join us....
Say 'Hebbo' to Tarvuism!
Why not take a look at some of our exciting web pages? Click on the Tarvupedia to read our online Tarvuist encyclopedia, learn all about Tarvu, chat to other Tarvuists in our Tarvuist forum, and find out how you too can become a Tarvuist.
Watch our film below and see what people say about Tarvuism.
“...And Tarvu created the Universe, and then the other Universe, and He was tired but happy. For He had created...creation.” (The Tarvunty, Qu*st*ons, 1-2, vv.2)
Since the dawn of time, mankind has searched for the meaning of life and existence. Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? But thanks to Tarvu - Lord and Master of the Universes - mankind can find the answers to all of life's questions.
Tarvu - creator of Universe A and Universe B (we live in Universe B) - came to Earth over 3,000 years ago as a tiny baby boy. After landing in the oceans, and swimming with Oobu the holy octopus, Tarvu came ashore and lived amongst men and women so that he could teach them 'to live'. Soon his Word spread, and that Word became Tarvuism.
Tarvuism is one of the oldest and largest religions in the world, with over 1 billion followers in over 150 countries - from afar as Iceland to Timonia - speaking as many languages. As Tarvu said 'Every land is nice, and everyone who lives there is nice too'. (Chronicles of Amzamiviram, Cpt 44).
Tarvu's teachings - in the holy book, The Tarvunty - show man and woman the path to true righteousness. His Word points to a unifying vision of the purpose of existence (or 'mdfitty numnum') and lead, ultimately, to a Tarvunian paradise.
Praise Tarvu!
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Thousands of people just like you are becoming Tarvuists every day. Now's your turn. Join us....
Say 'Hebbo' to Tarvuism!
Why not take a look at some of our exciting web pages? Click on the Tarvupedia to read our online Tarvuist encyclopedia, learn all about Tarvu, chat to other Tarvuists in our Tarvuist forum, and find out how you too can become a Tarvuist.
Watch our film below and see what people say about Tarvuism.
“...And Tarvu created the Universe, and then the other Universe, and He was tired but happy. For He had created...creation.” (The Tarvunty, Qu*st*ons, 1-2, vv.2)
Since the dawn of time, mankind has searched for the meaning of life and existence. Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? But thanks to Tarvu - Lord and Master of the Universes - mankind can find the answers to all of life's questions.
Tarvu - creator of Universe A and Universe B (we live in Universe B) - came to Earth over 3,000 years ago as a tiny baby boy. After landing in the oceans, and swimming with Oobu the holy octopus, Tarvu came ashore and lived amongst men and women so that he could teach them 'to live'. Soon his Word spread, and that Word became Tarvuism.
Tarvuism is one of the oldest and largest religions in the world, with over 1 billion followers in over 150 countries - from afar as Iceland to Timonia - speaking as many languages. As Tarvu said 'Every land is nice, and everyone who lives there is nice too'. (Chronicles of Amzamiviram, Cpt 44).
Tarvu's teachings - in the holy book, The Tarvunty - show man and woman the path to true righteousness. His Word points to a unifying vision of the purpose of existence (or 'mdfitty numnum') and lead, ultimately, to a Tarvunian paradise.
Praise Tarvu!
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Rushfield Babylon (Gary As I Knew Him)
Rushfield Babylon (Gary As I Knew Him): "Gary As I Knew Him
In 1984 Gary Coleman came to Crossroads School, where he enrolled in my class.
Of all the schools in the world, Crossroads was probably the one were Gary probably had the greatest chance of living anything resembling a normal life, given the liberalisness of the school meant that people generally didnt get beaten up for being short, etc and the school’s showbiz connections where every third parent was Barbara Streisand meant that he was not the spectacle he might have been elsewhere.
But that was not much of a chance. Even given all that, he was still Gary Coleman, at that time - with Strokes nearing the end of it’s run, the highest paid TV star on Earth, and not in any way shape or form anything resembling a normal kid. So despite it being Crossroads, the gawking and spectacle of his presence was not minimal.
And it soon became clear that while he wanted very much, fairly desperately in fact, to enjoy some of the trappings due to a “normal kid” he was completely without any experience in how to behave with people his age.
Of all the bad hands people have been dealt in life, of the people who I have known up close, compared to the starving in Mongolia, Gary had as about a rotten combination as anything I’d seen. I won’t give the details, but there was very much a horrifying tragedy about his life, a desperation that I think at age 16, was too big for us his classmates to comprehend or take in.
This was a kid who had been shoved on stage before he knew what the stage was; who had been farmed out by his parents to a network that used this child and his instant catch phrase as their trained seal while entirely depriving him of the life of a normal child. At this phase, Strokes had moved from NBC to squeeze once last season’s worth of blood out of it on ABC. We didn’t know then how the parents were systematically pillaging the fortunes their son was bringing in, but I do recall a sorta uncomfortable feeling about his father coming to pick him up in a massive, I believe Rolls Royce every day. And then there were his health problems which kept him in more pain than any of us knew and ultimately forced him to drop out before graduation.
But despite all this, there was this sense of some incredibly energetic mind trying to do things, striving, searching for his way, as all teenagers are, but with far fewer guideposts. On one end of the spectrum was the day he came to school dressed in an elaborate and impressive astronaut’s uniform. On the other end, he was writing screenplays - something back then that teenagers didn’t really do - which he carried around in his briefcase, spinning plans for a writing/directing career.
Given all that he had to deal with, its not surprising that he was never able to find the way through all the clutter of his life, the baggage of being Gary Coleman, to live out his dreams. How many of us after all do, with far less clinging onto us.
The last time I saw him was a few years after high school in a video store in Westwood. Strokes was long over by then, and he was buying up a huge selection of movies to watch, and clearly didn’t have anyone to watch them with him. I wish I could say I reached out a hand to an old classmate, but again, we were young and selfish, and too new at life to understand how his hyperactive clinginess was born from a real tragedy not just like a nerd being annoying.
As I grew older and watched now from afar, the reports his life get stranger and stranger, it became more clear how much what had happened in those days had cost him; to have your childhood stolen by our nation’s major industry when you are very young, small, ill and fragile, how does one recover from that and ever just “be normal”, particularly when you remain, long after the show has ended and the money is gone, such a recognizable figure, someone who, where ever you go will live with being a character that you never were given the chance to pick. Sadder still to think, from the very little glimpse I got, that there were real dreams in there that would never find their way to the light.
Even in death, as we can see on twitter today, the joke of being Gary Coleman is what the world sees first.
Rest in Peace, Gary. And hope that you’re now in a place where the road is for you and you alone to choose.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
In 1984 Gary Coleman came to Crossroads School, where he enrolled in my class.
Of all the schools in the world, Crossroads was probably the one were Gary probably had the greatest chance of living anything resembling a normal life, given the liberalisness of the school meant that people generally didnt get beaten up for being short, etc and the school’s showbiz connections where every third parent was Barbara Streisand meant that he was not the spectacle he might have been elsewhere.
But that was not much of a chance. Even given all that, he was still Gary Coleman, at that time - with Strokes nearing the end of it’s run, the highest paid TV star on Earth, and not in any way shape or form anything resembling a normal kid. So despite it being Crossroads, the gawking and spectacle of his presence was not minimal.
And it soon became clear that while he wanted very much, fairly desperately in fact, to enjoy some of the trappings due to a “normal kid” he was completely without any experience in how to behave with people his age.
Of all the bad hands people have been dealt in life, of the people who I have known up close, compared to the starving in Mongolia, Gary had as about a rotten combination as anything I’d seen. I won’t give the details, but there was very much a horrifying tragedy about his life, a desperation that I think at age 16, was too big for us his classmates to comprehend or take in.
This was a kid who had been shoved on stage before he knew what the stage was; who had been farmed out by his parents to a network that used this child and his instant catch phrase as their trained seal while entirely depriving him of the life of a normal child. At this phase, Strokes had moved from NBC to squeeze once last season’s worth of blood out of it on ABC. We didn’t know then how the parents were systematically pillaging the fortunes their son was bringing in, but I do recall a sorta uncomfortable feeling about his father coming to pick him up in a massive, I believe Rolls Royce every day. And then there were his health problems which kept him in more pain than any of us knew and ultimately forced him to drop out before graduation.
But despite all this, there was this sense of some incredibly energetic mind trying to do things, striving, searching for his way, as all teenagers are, but with far fewer guideposts. On one end of the spectrum was the day he came to school dressed in an elaborate and impressive astronaut’s uniform. On the other end, he was writing screenplays - something back then that teenagers didn’t really do - which he carried around in his briefcase, spinning plans for a writing/directing career.
Given all that he had to deal with, its not surprising that he was never able to find the way through all the clutter of his life, the baggage of being Gary Coleman, to live out his dreams. How many of us after all do, with far less clinging onto us.
The last time I saw him was a few years after high school in a video store in Westwood. Strokes was long over by then, and he was buying up a huge selection of movies to watch, and clearly didn’t have anyone to watch them with him. I wish I could say I reached out a hand to an old classmate, but again, we were young and selfish, and too new at life to understand how his hyperactive clinginess was born from a real tragedy not just like a nerd being annoying.
As I grew older and watched now from afar, the reports his life get stranger and stranger, it became more clear how much what had happened in those days had cost him; to have your childhood stolen by our nation’s major industry when you are very young, small, ill and fragile, how does one recover from that and ever just “be normal”, particularly when you remain, long after the show has ended and the money is gone, such a recognizable figure, someone who, where ever you go will live with being a character that you never were given the chance to pick. Sadder still to think, from the very little glimpse I got, that there were real dreams in there that would never find their way to the light.
Even in death, as we can see on twitter today, the joke of being Gary Coleman is what the world sees first.
Rest in Peace, Gary. And hope that you’re now in a place where the road is for you and you alone to choose.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Intelligent design to be taught in Queensland schools under national curriculum | Courier Mail
Intelligent design to be taught in Queensland schools under national curriculum | Courier Mail: "Intelligent design to be taught in Queensland schools under national curriculum
* by Carly Hennessy
* From: The Sunday Mail (Qld)
* May 30, 2010 12:00AM
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CREATIONISM and intelligent design will be taught in Queensland state schools for the first time as part of the new national curriculum.
Creationists dismiss the science of evolution, instead believing that living things are best explained by an intelligent being or God, rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.
The issue of creationism being taught in schools has caused huge controversy in the US, where some fundamentalist religious schools teach it as a science subject instead of Darwin's theory of evolution.
In Queensland schools, creationism will be offered for discussion in the subject of ancient history, under the topic of 'controversies'.
Don't miss The Courier-Mail on Tuesday for the 2010 High School Report, an eight-page liftout containing Year 12 results, including OPs, from every school across the state
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
Related Coverage
* Origin of life: Ban design theory in class: scientists
* 'Dumbed down': New 'history war'
* Vatican: Hell 'harder' for paedophile priests
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
Teachers are still formulating a response to the draft national curriculum, scheduled to be introduced next year.
Queensland History Teachers' Association head Kay Bishop said the curriculum asked students to develop their historical skills in an 'investigation of a controversial issue' such as 'human origins (eg, Darwin's theory of evolution and its critics').
'It's opening up opportunities for debate and discussion, not to push a particular view,' Ms Bishop said. Classroom debate about issues encouraged critical thinking – an important tool, she said.
Associated Christian Schools executive officer Lynne Doneley welcomed the draft curriculum, saying it cemented the position of a faith-based approach to teaching.
'We talk to students from a faith science basis, but we're not biased in the delivery of curriculum,' Mrs Doneley said. 'We say, 'This is where we're coming from' but allow students to make up their own minds.'
But Griffith University humanities lecturer Paul Williams said it was important to be cautious about such content.
'It's important that education authorities are vigilant that this is not a blank cheque to push theological barrows,' Mr Williams said.
'I would be loath to see it taught as theory.
'It's up there with the world being occupied by aliens since Roswell.'
Ms Bishop said there were bigger problems with the national curriculum.
History teachers are planning to object to repetitive subject matter, such as World War I being a major part of the Year 10 course and repeated in Year 11.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
* by Carly Hennessy
* From: The Sunday Mail (Qld)
* May 30, 2010 12:00AM
* Increase Text Size
* Decrease Text Size
* Share
o Add to Digg
o Add to del.icio.us
o Add to Facebook
o Add to Kwoff
o Add to Myspace
o Add to Newsvine
o What are these?
CREATIONISM and intelligent design will be taught in Queensland state schools for the first time as part of the new national curriculum.
Creationists dismiss the science of evolution, instead believing that living things are best explained by an intelligent being or God, rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.
The issue of creationism being taught in schools has caused huge controversy in the US, where some fundamentalist religious schools teach it as a science subject instead of Darwin's theory of evolution.
In Queensland schools, creationism will be offered for discussion in the subject of ancient history, under the topic of 'controversies'.
Don't miss The Courier-Mail on Tuesday for the 2010 High School Report, an eight-page liftout containing Year 12 results, including OPs, from every school across the state
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar.
Related Coverage
* Origin of life: Ban design theory in class: scientists
* 'Dumbed down': New 'history war'
* Vatican: Hell 'harder' for paedophile priests
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
Teachers are still formulating a response to the draft national curriculum, scheduled to be introduced next year.
Queensland History Teachers' Association head Kay Bishop said the curriculum asked students to develop their historical skills in an 'investigation of a controversial issue' such as 'human origins (eg, Darwin's theory of evolution and its critics').
'It's opening up opportunities for debate and discussion, not to push a particular view,' Ms Bishop said. Classroom debate about issues encouraged critical thinking – an important tool, she said.
Associated Christian Schools executive officer Lynne Doneley welcomed the draft curriculum, saying it cemented the position of a faith-based approach to teaching.
'We talk to students from a faith science basis, but we're not biased in the delivery of curriculum,' Mrs Doneley said. 'We say, 'This is where we're coming from' but allow students to make up their own minds.'
But Griffith University humanities lecturer Paul Williams said it was important to be cautious about such content.
'It's important that education authorities are vigilant that this is not a blank cheque to push theological barrows,' Mr Williams said.
'I would be loath to see it taught as theory.
'It's up there with the world being occupied by aliens since Roswell.'
Ms Bishop said there were bigger problems with the national curriculum.
History teachers are planning to object to repetitive subject matter, such as World War I being a major part of the Year 10 course and repeated in Year 11.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Digital Britain and the return of the Stationer’s Company | The Media Wonk
Digital Britain and the return of the Stationer’s Company | The Media Wonk: "Digital Britain and the return of the Stationer’s Company
April 11th, 2010 | Categories: Copyright, Global IP, Internet, Legal, Licensing, Policy, Regulation | Tags: Copyright, digital britain, digital economy bill, HADOPI
Last week marked the 300th anniversary of the Statute of Anne, the first true modern copyright law in the West, which was passed by the British Parliament in 1710. It established a copyright term of 14 years and, for the first time, brought the author on stage as the party in whom the right was vested, rather than the bookseller/printer who had dominated the trade both legally and commercially since Gutenberg’s time. The statute also made the term renewable for another 14 years if the author were still alive at the expiration of the initial period.
Last week also occasioned the passage in England of the Digital Economy Bill, which, for the first time, made ISPs legally liable for the actions of their subscribers and imposed on them an affirmative obligation to protect copyrights to which they are not party. The timing of the passage was surely a coincidence. It’s unlikely many in Parliament were aware of date’s significance. But it presented a striking juxtaposition nonetheless.
Prior to 1710, the book and printing trade in Britain (they were one in the same) was controlled by the Stationer’s Company of London, a royally chartered corporation with the power to enforce crown-sanctioned publishing monopolies (also called patents), regulate the import of books and see to it that no “seditious” or otherwise “objectionable” books or pamphlets were printed within the kingdom.
Since 1662, the Stationer’s had operated under the Licensing Act, which made it a crime to print any book in Britain without a license (the history of the Stationer’s Company actually goes back much farther, and is fascinating but beyond the scope of this blog post). To be licensed, a printer had to be a member in good standing of the stationer’s guild and submit to the authority of the Stationer’s Company.
The purpose of the 1662 Act was to regulate the potentially dangerous technology of printing, not to protect anything we would recognize today as authorial rights or intellectual property. Once an author had sold his “copy” (i.e. manuscript) to a printer, under the Stationer’s Company system, he had no further legal or contractual claim on the proceeds. It was fundamentally a system of censorship and control, but one that was highly lucrative for the printers.
By 1693, the Licensing Act was set to expire. Anxious to maintain their monopolies, printers agitated for an extension. They got one, but only until 1695, when the debate began again.
By then, however, the politics of publishing had changed. Influenced by the writings of John Locke and Daniel Defoe, among others, the legal foundations of monopolies and censorship got swept up in partisan debates that erupted in the years following the Glorious Revolution. So, too, did traditions like the operation of the Stationer’s Company that smacked of royal privilege.
The text and structure of the Statute of Anne reflect that ferment. In particular, the introduction of the author as a legal and economic actor in his own right was seen as a way to resolve many of the tensions over licensing and monopoly.
In his Essay on the Regulation of the Press, Defoe argued that investing authors with proprietary rights would resolve the problem of writers issuing objectionable works anonymously without a license by inducing them to take ownership of their work by putting their name to it. Should a published work be deemed objectionable, the author could be sanctioned after the fact. Thus, the licensing system would become unnecessary.
For if an Author has not the right of a Book, after he has made it, and the benefit be not his own, and the Law will not protect him in that Benefit, ‘twould be very hard the Law should pretend to punish him for it.
‘Twould be unaccountably severe, to make a Man answerable for the Miscarriages of a thing which he shall not reap the benefit of if well perfom’d.
Similarly, authorial rights were seen as a useful mechanism for breaking the hold not only of individual printers’ monopolies but of the Stationer’s Company’s grip on the book trade generally. As the copyright historian Lyman Patterson wrote in Copyright in Historical Perspective:
The monopolies at which the statute was aimed were too long established to be attacked without some basis for change. The most logical and natural basis for the changes was the author. Although the author had never held copyright, his interest was always promoted by the stationers as a means to their end. Their arguments had been, essentially, that without order in the trade provided by copyright, publishers would not publish books, and therefore would not pay authors for their manuscripts. The draftsmen of the Statute of Anne put these arguments to use, and the author was used primarily as a weapon against monopoly.
The maximum 28-year term of protection in the law served to emphasize the point.
Though the framers of the Statute of Anne may have had limited aims, there was nothing limited about what they accomplished. In addition to making owners of authors, the law transformed copyright from what was essentially a legal and regulatory system to a system based on market incentives, laying the foundation of the Anglo-American system of copyright for the next three centuries.
Three hundred years later, almost to the day, we have the spectacle of the British Parliament again wrestling with a nettlesome new communication technology. Only this time it’s the technology itself that threatens to obliterate publishing monopolies and the “reformers” that seek to reassert them.
As happened then, a new actor has been called on stage to try to resolve the tension, in this case the Internet service provider. Rather than investing the ISP the new actor with proprietary rights, as the enlightenment thinkers of the 17th Century proposed, the Digital Economy Bill imposes on ISPs new obligations.
Under the new law, copyright owners can send ISPs “copyright infringement reports,” identify instances of alleged infringement. ISPs are obligated to pass the notice on to the subscriber identified by IP address. If requested, ISPs are also required to provide copyright owners with a “copyright infringement list,” identifying all instances of infringement by a user.
The law also compels Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulatory authority, to report every three and 12 months on the level of copyright infringement occurring online. The government then has the power to order Ofcom to require ISPs to implement technical measures to address infringement, ranging from throttling and bandwidth shaping to blocking specific sites and suspending users’ accounts.
If an ISP fails to implement the required technical measures it can be fined by the government.
In fairness, the law is not likely to be as Draconian as that summary makes it sound. There are many conditions that must be met before the most severe penalties can be imposed, and any penalties that do result must square with European Union directives that are more protective of online privacy. But it’s a striking departure nonetheless from the legacy of the Statute of Anne.
In place of market incentives, the Digital Economy Bill, along with its French counterpart, HADOPI, and the growing chorus in the U.S. for imposing greater liability on ISPs, relies on sanctions, and points copyright law back toward a system of regulation, if not quite official licensing.
Again in fairness, digital technology is different from the technology of the printing press, and may indeed require a different kind of response. But before we throw the baby out with the bath water, it’s worth remembering how well the system of market incentives set up 300 years ago has served the public interest up to now.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
April 11th, 2010 | Categories: Copyright, Global IP, Internet, Legal, Licensing, Policy, Regulation | Tags: Copyright, digital britain, digital economy bill, HADOPI
Last week marked the 300th anniversary of the Statute of Anne, the first true modern copyright law in the West, which was passed by the British Parliament in 1710. It established a copyright term of 14 years and, for the first time, brought the author on stage as the party in whom the right was vested, rather than the bookseller/printer who had dominated the trade both legally and commercially since Gutenberg’s time. The statute also made the term renewable for another 14 years if the author were still alive at the expiration of the initial period.
Last week also occasioned the passage in England of the Digital Economy Bill, which, for the first time, made ISPs legally liable for the actions of their subscribers and imposed on them an affirmative obligation to protect copyrights to which they are not party. The timing of the passage was surely a coincidence. It’s unlikely many in Parliament were aware of date’s significance. But it presented a striking juxtaposition nonetheless.
Prior to 1710, the book and printing trade in Britain (they were one in the same) was controlled by the Stationer’s Company of London, a royally chartered corporation with the power to enforce crown-sanctioned publishing monopolies (also called patents), regulate the import of books and see to it that no “seditious” or otherwise “objectionable” books or pamphlets were printed within the kingdom.
Since 1662, the Stationer’s had operated under the Licensing Act, which made it a crime to print any book in Britain without a license (the history of the Stationer’s Company actually goes back much farther, and is fascinating but beyond the scope of this blog post). To be licensed, a printer had to be a member in good standing of the stationer’s guild and submit to the authority of the Stationer’s Company.
The purpose of the 1662 Act was to regulate the potentially dangerous technology of printing, not to protect anything we would recognize today as authorial rights or intellectual property. Once an author had sold his “copy” (i.e. manuscript) to a printer, under the Stationer’s Company system, he had no further legal or contractual claim on the proceeds. It was fundamentally a system of censorship and control, but one that was highly lucrative for the printers.
By 1693, the Licensing Act was set to expire. Anxious to maintain their monopolies, printers agitated for an extension. They got one, but only until 1695, when the debate began again.
By then, however, the politics of publishing had changed. Influenced by the writings of John Locke and Daniel Defoe, among others, the legal foundations of monopolies and censorship got swept up in partisan debates that erupted in the years following the Glorious Revolution. So, too, did traditions like the operation of the Stationer’s Company that smacked of royal privilege.
The text and structure of the Statute of Anne reflect that ferment. In particular, the introduction of the author as a legal and economic actor in his own right was seen as a way to resolve many of the tensions over licensing and monopoly.
In his Essay on the Regulation of the Press, Defoe argued that investing authors with proprietary rights would resolve the problem of writers issuing objectionable works anonymously without a license by inducing them to take ownership of their work by putting their name to it. Should a published work be deemed objectionable, the author could be sanctioned after the fact. Thus, the licensing system would become unnecessary.
For if an Author has not the right of a Book, after he has made it, and the benefit be not his own, and the Law will not protect him in that Benefit, ‘twould be very hard the Law should pretend to punish him for it.
‘Twould be unaccountably severe, to make a Man answerable for the Miscarriages of a thing which he shall not reap the benefit of if well perfom’d.
Similarly, authorial rights were seen as a useful mechanism for breaking the hold not only of individual printers’ monopolies but of the Stationer’s Company’s grip on the book trade generally. As the copyright historian Lyman Patterson wrote in Copyright in Historical Perspective:
The monopolies at which the statute was aimed were too long established to be attacked without some basis for change. The most logical and natural basis for the changes was the author. Although the author had never held copyright, his interest was always promoted by the stationers as a means to their end. Their arguments had been, essentially, that without order in the trade provided by copyright, publishers would not publish books, and therefore would not pay authors for their manuscripts. The draftsmen of the Statute of Anne put these arguments to use, and the author was used primarily as a weapon against monopoly.
The maximum 28-year term of protection in the law served to emphasize the point.
Though the framers of the Statute of Anne may have had limited aims, there was nothing limited about what they accomplished. In addition to making owners of authors, the law transformed copyright from what was essentially a legal and regulatory system to a system based on market incentives, laying the foundation of the Anglo-American system of copyright for the next three centuries.
Three hundred years later, almost to the day, we have the spectacle of the British Parliament again wrestling with a nettlesome new communication technology. Only this time it’s the technology itself that threatens to obliterate publishing monopolies and the “reformers” that seek to reassert them.
As happened then, a new actor has been called on stage to try to resolve the tension, in this case the Internet service provider. Rather than investing the ISP the new actor with proprietary rights, as the enlightenment thinkers of the 17th Century proposed, the Digital Economy Bill imposes on ISPs new obligations.
Under the new law, copyright owners can send ISPs “copyright infringement reports,” identify instances of alleged infringement. ISPs are obligated to pass the notice on to the subscriber identified by IP address. If requested, ISPs are also required to provide copyright owners with a “copyright infringement list,” identifying all instances of infringement by a user.
The law also compels Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulatory authority, to report every three and 12 months on the level of copyright infringement occurring online. The government then has the power to order Ofcom to require ISPs to implement technical measures to address infringement, ranging from throttling and bandwidth shaping to blocking specific sites and suspending users’ accounts.
If an ISP fails to implement the required technical measures it can be fined by the government.
In fairness, the law is not likely to be as Draconian as that summary makes it sound. There are many conditions that must be met before the most severe penalties can be imposed, and any penalties that do result must square with European Union directives that are more protective of online privacy. But it’s a striking departure nonetheless from the legacy of the Statute of Anne.
In place of market incentives, the Digital Economy Bill, along with its French counterpart, HADOPI, and the growing chorus in the U.S. for imposing greater liability on ISPs, relies on sanctions, and points copyright law back toward a system of regulation, if not quite official licensing.
Again in fairness, digital technology is different from the technology of the printing press, and may indeed require a different kind of response. But before we throw the baby out with the bath water, it’s worth remembering how well the system of market incentives set up 300 years ago has served the public interest up to now.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
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