Universities clamp down on internet piracy

The Local: May 15, 2009

http://www.thelocal.se/19460/20090515/

Swedish universities have begun denying students suspected of illegal file sharing access to school computer networks, prompting criticism from both student groups and file sharing advocates.

The internet access bans have come following complaints from American film companies that the university’s networks are being used to illegally download copyrighted material.

“We cut people off when we get a second notice,” said Linköping University IT-security specialist Johannes Haasmund to Sveriges Radio (SR).

But Haasmund admitted that the university doesn’t verify whether or not the file sharing actually involves copyrighted material, but instead takes actions based only on the complaints it receives.

According to Sweden’s new anti-piracy law, a film company wishing to block a user suspected of illegal file sharing via a commercial internet service provider (ISP) must submit the request to judicial review.

In contrast, universities connected to the Sunet university computer network can simply cut off access without any formal review.

Thorbjörn Wiktorin, who works with IT-security at Uppsala University, said his school takes swift action because it is a public institution, not a commercial venture.

He estimates about 100 Uppsala University students have had their internet access revoked since October, but added that improved behaviour can lead to a restoration of network access privileges.

But the universities’ actions have sparked outrage from Moa Neuman, head of Sweden’s association of student unions, Sveriges förenade studentkårer (SFS) who is concerned about the consequences a loss of internet access might have as the end of the academic year approaches.

“It can have consequences for students and their ability to complete their studies if they don’t have internet access, because that’s really important for a lot of students right now,” she told SR.

“It can also have consequences for how these students’ views about a just society.”

In reaction to the university’s decision to cut off internet access for students suspected of internet piracy, SFS has joined forces with the Pirate Party’s youth wing, Young Pirates, to demand that universities stop the practice.

David Landes (david.landes@thelocal.se/+46 8 656 6518)

David Landes

The Local: May 15, 2009

http://www.thelocal.se/19478/20090515/

Internet service providers (ISPs) in Sweden will be forced to store customer data for at least six months starting in 2010, according to a new proposal from the government.

The proposal, which is still in its initial stages but was leaked onto the internet and reported on by the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper, is an attempt by the Ministry of Justice to prevent internet providers from diluting a new law meant to make it easier to hunt down people suspected of illegal file sharing.

Under Sweden’s new anti-piracy law, which is based on the EU’s Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) and went into force on April 1st, ISPs can be forced by a court order to release information about users under investigation for possible copyright violations.

But because several internet providers, including Bahnhof and Tele2, continually erase customer data, the companies currently have no data to hand over should they be asked to do so.

As a result of the ISPs’ policies, the efficacy of Sweden’s IPRED-law has been greatly diminished.

In order to rectify the law’s shortcomings, Sweden’s Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask has laid out plans in an unpublished referral to Sweden’s Council on Legislation (Lagrådet) which would force ISPs to save information about their customers for six months.

A spokesperson for the justice minister, Martin Valfridsson, stressed that the proposal isn’t finished yet and that nothing is set in stone.

“There is no referral to the Council on Legislation. The government hasn’t taken a decision about any referral to the Council and until the government has done so, nothing is finished,” he told the TT news agency.

Word of the new proposal prompted the Pirate Party to issue a statement condemning the government’s plans, calling the suggestion a “mass-registration” of communications between individual citizens.

“Storing the data means that the state has a register of all contacts ordinary people have via the internet and the telephone, even though they aren’t suspected of any crime. It violates the constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights,” said Christian Engström, the Pirate Party’s top candidate in the European Parliamentary election, in a statement.

“The internet isn’t a playground where politicians get to do what they want. The constitution applies, even on the internet. We have the right to keep our private lives private,” said Engström.

Ministry of Justice legal expert Karin Walberg told DN that the government had hoped to present a government bill in June, following a review of the proposal by the Council on Legislation which was expected to be completed within a few weeks.

But the Pirate Party’s Engström theorized that the government had planned to wait until after the June 7th EU-parliament elections to officially release the proposal.

enigmax

TorrentFreak: May 14, 2009

http://torrentfreak.com/documentary-filmmaker-supports-bittorrent-uploader-090514/

When a filmmaker first discovered that his new movie had leaked to the Internet, he was pretty upset. However, this creator has some hacker friends who persuaded him to feel more relaxed about reaching a whole new audience. Right now, he is embracing file-sharing and even the uploader who released his work via BitTorrent sites.

Last week, ‘godcanjudgeme‘, a prolific uploader to Demonoid, The Pirate Bay, Mininova and OneBigTorrent, made another upload to add to his long list of releases, but this one turned out a little differently to all the others.

Blue Gold : World Water Wars from director Sam Bozzo is a movie about one of planet earth’s most precious resources – water. It examines the ‘future’ for water and how various corporations are plotting to control its supply, how governments use water for political gain and how the control of this essential liquid could be the source of future military conflicts.

Of course, when anyone uploads a movie to the Internet in breach of copyright, there is always the chance of a different type of conflict – one with the entertainment companies and their anti-piracy allies. However, this particular movie is independent and less likely to attract that type of attention. Perhaps because of this and a warmth towards independent creators, the movie’s BitTorrent uploader godcanjudgeme added a note to his release on The Pirate Bay, encouraging people to financially support the movie by giving donations to the creators via their website.

Then something surprising happened. “A message was sent to a third party ‘acquaintance’ of mine, from the film’s producer Sam Bozzo,” godcanjudgeme told TorrentFreak.

Dear Torrent users,

I thank all of you for your interest in my film. When I read the book Blue Gold, I knew immediately I must utilize my film talents to relay the urgency of prioritizing our fresh water management for the survival of our race. I had no idea of the financial and physical risks that making this film would entail at the time, and if I did I honestly would not have made the film. Luckily for the world, the film exists, and so it is my goal to follow the advise of the first press review which proclaimed “Every person on the planet must see this film”. In this respect I thank godcanjudgeme for uploading this torrent and bringing a new audience to the film.

I have seen film festival audiences around the world transformed by the stories of the heroes of the water wars. I am thrilled that in the US and Canada the DVD is available via shoppbs.org and amazon.ca respectively. I respect the internet community that chooses to view films through torrents like this for whatever reason. In fact my first documentary, Hackers Wanted, focuses on the philosophy of true hackers and their journeys exploring cyberspace.

It is important to understand that independent films costs a great deal of personal finances to create, in this case over $100,000. In order that I may make other films in the future, I must at least make my money back. I respectfully ask that if you download the film you consider donating $5-$10 to the further publicity of the film via PayPal on my site www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com. Also consider reviewing the film favorably on IMDB and recommending that others buy the DVD.

To be honest, at first I was upset to see this torrent, this film ‘leak’, but some good hacker friends have suggested I embrace the opportunity to reach a new audience, and I feel honored to be doing so!

So what inspired godcanjudgeme to upload the torrent in the first instance?

“I had received a number of requests for “Blue Gold : World Water Wars” after uploading another documentary entitled “Flow : The Love Of Water” which runs along similar lines,” he told TorrentFreak. “It is a topic which should be close to everyone’s hearts. The main reason for uploading “Blue Gold” was that it simply wasn’t available outside America, and so many people were wanting to see it,” he added.

Godcanjudgeme explained that he firmly believes that the downloaders of this particular documentary are not the average ‘hit and run’ movie grabber.

“I felt that in this case these are people that would have gone to a screening or purchased a copy if it was an option,” he told TorrentFeak. “Therefore I truly hope people will realize that independent filmmakers do need our support. If this were a multi million dollar production I could expect no consideration for the producers of the film, but in this case however it was decided to ask that people give something in return to the persons responsible for providing not only entertainment but insight.”

“We all have movies that we have downloaded for free,” he added, “probably large numbers of them, in this case I think it’s time to show our support.”

Since Sam Bozzo is embracing BitTorrent, it seems appropriate to add links where people can download the movie. And in the spirit in which godcanjudgeme uploaded the movie, please consider donating.

The DVDRip can be downloaded from OneBigTorrent or The Pirate Bay .

John Sullivan, Free Software Foundation

TorrentFreak: May 13, 2009

http://torrentfreak.com/the-war-on-sharing-why-the-fsf-cares-about-riaa-lawsuits-090513/

In one of RIAA’s high profile cases the Free Software Foundation backed defendant Joel Tenenbaum, much to the dislike of the music industry lobby. John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the FSF explains in a guest post why they think these cases impact not just music, but also free software and its technology.

We don’t make (much) music here at the Free Software Foundation, so it’s natural for people to wonder why the FSF has been standing up for individuals targeted by lawsuits launched by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Most recently we filed an *amicus curiae* brief in the case of *Sony BMG Music Entertainment, et al. v. Joel Tenenbaum* showing the RIAA’s theory of statutory damage awards to be unconstitutional.

Some would prefer that we refrain from fighting these lawsuits, suggesting that they are a distraction from the FSF’s core charter. But opposing them is actually an important part of our mission to support free software. First, these lawsuits represent a concerted attempt to rewrite copyright law in a way that threatens to undermine the ultimate goals of the free software movement. Second, a vocal minority in the entertainment industry uses these lawsuits as warrants to justify DRM technology and other measures to monitor and control the flow of information over the internet. Third, if unopposed, these lawsuits create a culture in which people are afraid to share, presuming sharing to be theft.

In their response to our brief, the RIAA says, “The FSF is not a neutral friend of the Court. Rather, FSF is an organization dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, and modifying computer programs, classic intellectual property, much like the sound recordings at issue in this case [*sic*].” It’s unclear what legal aim the RIAA lawyers from the firms of Holme Roberts & Owen and Dwyer & Collora think they are accomplishing with this attack. Having an interest in the outcome of a case is the reason organizations file such briefs. William Rehnquist defined *amicus curiae* as, “a phrase that literally means ‘friend of the court’ — someone who is not a party to the litigation, but who believes that the court’s decision may affect its interest.”

But here, it is the public’s interest that we are defending, not our own. While we don’t agree — as the RIAA claims — that we are more “virulent” than an organization that intimidates everyone from the elderly to college students to the severely disabled into either paying “settlement” money or facing the crushing expenses of defending against unwarranted prosecution in faraway jurisdictions, the RIAA is correct that the FSF does have a position on copyright. Although we are primarily concerned not with music, but with how software can be made and shared so as to benefit and empower everyone, neither are the impacts of the RIAA’s actions restricted to the distribution of music. Their lawsuits are a deliberate campaign to rewrite copyright law through the courts. They are attempting to set precedents which will affect all works governed by copyright law, including software.

The RIAA, which in its litigation campaign represents exclusively EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and their affiliates, would like to change copyright to be an ordinary physical property right. Through these lawsuits, they seek to establish near exclusive permanent control over each and every use of the recordings their members distribute, expanding the power of copyright owners to include things which are not part of the existing body of law, and extracting financial penalties from the largely defenseless individuals accused of disobeying them.

But copyright is not and was not intended to be a right like this. In fact, copyright requires that the public give up some of its rights, such as to free speech and free association, in order to promote another of its fundamental interests — progress in the sciences and useful arts. In “Misinterpreting Copyright,” FSF president Richard Stallman draws an analogy between this tradeoff and government procurement. When doing any kind of purchasing necessary to do the public’s work, the government seeks (if imperfectly) to minimize the amount of taxpayer money spent to obtain the needed goods. This means paying a price that suppliers will find acceptable, while avoiding being gouged by those suppliers who may claim that the goods are worth a lot more than they really are. When the U.S. Navy was accused of paying Lockheed $640 per toilet seat for some of its aircraft, people were understandably outraged, because the government had squandered the public’s money.

In the case of copyright, it’s the public’s freedom that the government is spending, to obtain in return for the public scientific and cultural goods. Right now, governments are squandering this freedom. They are spending far too much and getting far too little in return. Plenty of authors and artists are telling the government that works can and will be made without such expenditure. The international free software movement has been proving this for many years now, having successfully produced a fully functional operating system in GNU/Linux that can be freely used, shared and improved upon by anyone who wants to do so; and more recently there have been people doing similar things in encyclopedias, textbooks, and the world of the arts (including music).

Previously, because the required equipment was large and expensive, normal readers and listeners did not have the means to easily make copies. Restrictive copyright did not negatively affect them. But now, because so many more people do have the ability to easily exercise this freedom, the burden imposed by copyright restrictions on our society has become unacceptably heavy. Even while these restrictions have become more burdensome, they have become less necessary — with the cost of publishing so much lower now, less incentive is required. Instead of acknowledging this, the government has been taking the side of those who, out of greed akin to selling us $640 toilet seats, see an opportunity to freeze what should be a contingent and evolving bargain into a permanent and natural right for themselves, expanding ownership powers under copyright law far beyond its current and historical borders.

In the U.S., the new administration continues to side against the public. Vice President Joe Biden recently spoke at a MPAA luncheon. He adopted the entertainment industry’s loaded “piracy” language, saying, “It’s pure theft.” Biden also assured the MPAA that President Obama would find the “right” copyright czar. His attitude is not surprising, given his past eagerness as a senator to sponsor and support RIAA-backed legislation. He was, after all, one of four U.S. senators invited to a champagne celebration of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) hosted by the MPAA, RIAA, and the Business Software Alliance. Obama himself has already appointed Tom Perrelli and Donald Verrilli, both former lead attorneys for the RIAA, to be associate and deputy associate attorney general.

If we are going to achieve sane copyright law, we have to avoid confusing this institutionalization of corporate greed with “art.” In fact, it seems most artists disagree with the RIAA. Sony artists reportedly earn a tiny $0.045 for each song sold on iTunes, and most of them will never receive even that much from Sony. As one example among many, singer Courtney Love answers the charge of piracy by saying: “What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist’s work without any intention of paying for it. I’m not talking about Napster-type software. I’m talking about major label recording contracts.”

The RIAA doesn’t stop at manipulating copyright law to gouge artists and the public. They also use their lawsuits as leverage to argue for control over any technology that could be used to distribute music. For example, they have pushed to require all wireless access points to be encrypted and closed, to restrict technologies like BitTorrent and other forms of peer-to-peer distribution, to impose bandwidth caps on home internet users, and to monitor traffic through service providers. Such efforts directly hurt free software. Because free software authors around the world work by collaboration, they rely on open distribution networks to move software, data, and conversation around. In particular, peer-to-peer technologies make this easier and cheaper for people with less bandwidth, and so are a powerful means of boosting grassroots free software distribution and development efforts.

The RIAA further attacks free software when they use these filesharing cases as ammunition to advocate DRM under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It was the RIAA that attacked Princeton scientist Ed Felten for wanting to publish useful mathematical information, because this generally useful information might possibly be used to decrypt their specific DRM scheme. Sony saw no problem with secretly installing a rootkit on users’ computers, to facilitate spying on them and blocking certain activities. These efforts to turn computers against their users and to restrict technical information are on-face incompatible with free software. If we allow the RIAA to win outrageous damages in these lawsuits, then we are letting them manufacture evidence of losses due to illegal copying, which they will then use to demand from Congress more control over our technology.

Among both the government and the public, the RIAA lawsuits create a culture which frames these issues in terms that make it harder for free software to succeed, by creating a culture that fears sharing. This leads to confusion like the recent case of a schoolteacher who assumed that a student handing out GNU/Linux discs in class was breaking the law. One can hardly blame her for having this impression when the RIAA lawsuits and propaganda thoroughly permeate the news media, encouraging everyone to assume that sharing is wrong unless they are told otherwise.

The RIAA’s framing of the issue as “intellectual property” is another key way they foster this fear. They cite our opposition to this concept in their reply to our brief, and they are correct. The use of “intellectual property” language threatens to undermine the free software movement. The term lumps together disparate concepts like copyright, patents, and trademarks, which are legally distinct. The RIAA would like to lump them together because doing so increases the size of the gouge they can extract. By drawing an analogy with physical property, they erase the actual histories behind these specific areas of law and rationalize the obscene damages they are demanding. It skews discussion of the issues involved so that good solutions can’t be found, and if it is used in place of a clear discussion about copyright in the arena of music then people will accept it when discussing software as well.

The bottom line is that for art and software alike, sane copyright law should facilitate and promote sharing so that everyone can benefit from what is produced, and participate meaningfully in making it. For software, the easiest way to share is to put source code in the public domain, and not require any End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) or patent licenses. Anyone can then study and use the software, make changes to it, and redistribute changed versions to anyone they want. However, this leaves the door open for other people to use copyright law to make some changes to that software and strip away the freedom, redistributing their version without the freedoms that were originally there. Copyright law allows people to play middleman like this, intercepting works that are intended to be free and turning them into proprietary programs to control users.

To ensure that software written to be free remains free, the FSF uses a copyright license called the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL says that anyone is free to use, copy, change, and distribute modified versions of the software to which it is attached — as long as they pass on those same freedoms to whomever else they give the software. The GPL can do this because copyright law gives copyright holders the authority to outline those terms. Instead of using that authority to make copying illegal, the FSF uses that authority to make it illegal to make copying illegal.

Despite this, the FSF will continue working to reduce the power of copyright restrictions by fighting these lawsuits, filing briefs in specific cases, and collecting contributions to the RIAA Expert Witness Fund. We do not intend to shoot ourselves in the foot by supporting proposals to reduce the scope of copyright that would weaken the way the GPL protects freedom without simultaneously weakening the way companies like Microsoft and Apple use it as a weapon to take away freedom. But neither will we support the RIAA’s expansive approach to empowering copyright owners at the public’s expense on the grounds that it would make the GPL “stronger.” We will not accept losing the GPL as an effective shield unless as part of a plan that we could be confident would make software generally free. But neither will we confuse it with the end goal, which is a world where people are not called criminals when they want to see what the software on their computer is actually doing, or to share a copy with their neighbors, or to improve it and share their improvements.

Executives like Rolf Schmidt-Holtz of Sony Music Entertainment should get the message and back off. Although they claimed in December that they would stop filing lawsuits against individuals, the RIAA filed 62 more in the month of April alone. Citizens are tired of watching their governments squander their freedom to enrich this handful of corporations, and they are tired of being intimidated. We will continue our work to support this opposition to the War on Sharing, and to restore or replace copyright law for its intended purpose — progress in science and the arts, for everyone.

Like MySQL. But it can scale

Ted Dziuba

The Register: May 8, 2009

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/08/dziuba_sphinx/

Info and downloads: http://www.sphinxsearch.com/

In 2001, Andrew Aksyonoff had an itch. He ran a website that indexed song lyrics and allowed users to search them. At the time, none of the open source options for text search worked. Lucene, the standard response at an engineering team meeting when the problem of search comes up, was still a baby. Indexing took too long, and it was a bear to install on anything other than a Lucene developer’s machine.

Mnogosearch – the search engine you probably still haven’t heard of – was too bloated and took a full twenty-four hours to index Aksyonoff’s meager 150 megabytes of data. On top of all this, the standard algorithms for text search were about as useful as a venereal disease when it came to searching song lyrics. Andrew had a different idea of how text search should work – and the spare time to try it out. He did, and today, his software powers the search engines behind Craigslist, The Pirate Bay, and many more.

It’s called Sphinx, and it’s on track to become the open source world’s canonical answer to the question of text search. MySQL and Solr, the two popular solutions, are showing their age. MySQL introduced full-text search in late 2000 as a way to more intelligently search blobs of text stored in databases. You can work a full-text clause into a query, and MySQL will rank the result rows by how relevant it thinks they are to the query.

MySQL uses textbook search algorithms and doesn’t allow for a lot of relevance tuning. It’s like a drawing from a five year old: The heart is in the right place, but everybody knows that kids suck at drawing. Implementation details aside, MySQL still suffers from scalability problems. Having ignored the trend of chip manufacturers to build multiple cores into CPUs, hoping that this unpleasant trend that required them to actually think about multi-threading would just blow over sooner or later, MySQL’s ability to handle parallelism is, well, see the five year old’s drawing.

Internet-famous MySQL wonk Jeremy Zawodny, who had the foresight to jump from the ship’s bow as Yahoo started to take on water, replaced MySQL fulltext search at Craigslist with Sphinx. Craigslist used 25 machines to handle roughly 50 million queries per day on MySQL. Under that kind of load, Zawodny found that MySQL wasn’t using much CPU or doing much disk I/O, which means it’s spending all of its time waiting on thread locks. Oops.

Maybe we should have paid attention to parallelism after all. The Sphinx implementation took those 25 machines down to 10, with plenty of room to grow. While Sphinx didn’t handle the traffic out of the box at the time, Zawodny was able to patch it to handle Craigslist’s specific need – and fix a few bugs along the way.

Phoebe Kennedy

The Independent: May 18, 2009

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/brave-suu-kyi-supporters-keep-vigil-for-trial-1687153.html

As the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi opened in Rangoon today, dozens of her supporters braved razor wire barriers, road blocks and paramilitary intimidation outside Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison, where the trial is taking place, to show their solidarity with her.

The democracy leader is accused of violating the terms of her house arrest by allowing her unwelcome guest, John Yettaw, an American citizen who swam across the lake to the family villa where she is confined, to stay. If found guilty she could be jailed for five years.

Win Tin, a member of her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), who spent 19 years in isolation in the jail as a political prisoner, was one of the protesters. In a telephone interview with The Independent he said the trial was simply a ploy to extend her detention, which is about to expire.

“They are using this to extend her house arrest and to avoid her being present during the elections,” said the 79-year-old former journalist. “[That way,] she cannot meet the people, she cannot say anything against the election. She will be absent.” Elections under a new, widely criticised constitution are scheduled for next year.

British ambassador Mark Canning and other senior foreign diplomats tried to enter the prison to attend the trial but were turned back at a road block.

The closed court inside the high-security prison heard Lt Col Zaw Min Oo, chief prosecutor, accuse Ms Suu Kyi of being “in breach of discipline” for failing to turn Mr Yettaw over to the police who guarded her house.

But Nyan Win, one of Ms Suu Kyi’s three lawyers, rejected the charges. Speaking to The Independent outside the court, he said, “It is ridiculous to say it was a breach of discipline when this man was an intruder, she did not invite him there.” He added that the trial could last up to three months.

Ms Suu Kyi, 63, will plead not guilty, but observers fear that the outcome of the trial – a guilty verdict – is not in doubt. Her supporters believe the regime may use the case as a pretext for extending her latest six-year term of detention ahead of a 2010 general election which the military hopes will entrench its dominance under a new, much criticised constitution.

Mr Yettaw, a Mormon and Vietnam veteran whose motives are still unclear, swam more than a kilometre across Rangoon’s Inya Lake to Ms Suu Kyi’s home in early May. Ms Suu Kyi pleaded with him to leave, her lawyers say, but allowed him to stay the night when he complained of cramp and exhaustion. The 53-year-old American, who was arrested as he swam away from the house, is charged with immigration offences and entering a restricted zone.

Belying reports of fragile health, the opposition leader, dressed in an elegant Burmese outfit – a sky blue fitted jacket and matching long skirt – was in good spirits, according to Nyan Win.

“She asked me to give a message to all her friends and supporters that her health is good and that she is as alert and focused as ever,” he said.

Ms Suu Kyi was first put under house arrest almost 20 years ago, in July 1989, as her party was campaigning in Burma’s first general election since a coup d’etat ushered in military rule in 1962. She was still being held incommunicado when the triumphant results were published. But the military regime refused to honour the victory, arresting and killing many of the party’s supporters and MPs and driving many more into exile.

Ms Suu Kyi’s last, brief interlude of freedom ended with a regime-sponsored attempt on her life in July 2003. She was briefly incarcerated in Insein Prison before being once again locked up in her decaying lakeside villa.

Since then her conditions of imprisonment have been far harsher than before. She has no telephone and cannot receive letters. In that sense, her arrest has brought a welcome breath of fresh air and solidarity from the outside world. “We were able to inform her of the support of the international community,” said Nyan Win, referring to calls by world leaders such as Gordon Brown for her release. “She has no radio or TV so she is really heartened to hear these things.”

Ms Suu Kyi is being held in the grounds of the prison, which is notorious for its squalid conditions and the abuse suffered by inmates. She was reported as saying her accommodation was “comfortable.” Mr Yettaw and Ms Suu Kyi’s two housekeepers and companions, a mother and daughter who have lived with her since 2003, are being tried together with her.

Nyan Win said the trial could last for three months. A diplomat commented: “The regime hates the world’s attention on this so they will try to kick it into the long grass and hope the interest fades.”

Min Lwin & The Associated Press

The Irrawaddy: May 16, 2009

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15657

Two of Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers, Aung Thein and Khin Maung Shein, were dismissed from the country’s bar by the Burmese military on Friday.

“Township magistrate officer U Aung Soe and some local authorities came and gave an order in which we are dismissed from the Burmese lawyer’s list,” Aung Thein told The Irrawaddy on Saturday.

Attorney Aung Thein confirmed on Saturday that he had been dismissed on Friday, a day after he had applied to represent Suu Kyi in her latest trial, which is set to begin on Monday.

Aung Thein has defended political activists in the past and was recently jailed for four months for contempt of court because of his strong advocacy on his clients’ behalf.

“The dismissal is not fair to us,” Aung Thein said. “We have served four months (in detention for contempt to the court).”

In November, Aung Thein and his close associate Khin Maung Shein were both sentenced to four months imprisonment for contempt of court. The authorities were prejudiced against lawyers who have defended political activists, said Aung Thein.

Their past clients include the prominent Buddhist monk Gambira, who was sentenced to prison following his leadership of the “Saffron Uprising” in 2007. Aung Thein ultimately resigned from that case, complaining that he was had not been allowed to prepare a proper defense.

U Aung Thein is a lawyer associated with Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy’s (NLD) legal advisory team.

On Thursday, authorities barred Aung Thein from entering Insein Prison where Suu Kyi is being detained. Kyi Win was allowed inside the prison.

The Thailand-based human rights group, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) (AAPP), released a statement on Saturday saying Aung Thein had his license to practice law revoked by the authorities on grounds that he did not abide by professional ethics.

In a statement, the AAPP said the action was a blatant attempt to damage the defense of Suu Kyi and her two caretakers and represents a pattern of harassment against lawyers who defend pro-democracy activists. There are currently eleven lawyers in prison across the country on charges associated with defense of activists.

Suu Kyi was charged on Thursday with violating the terms of her house arrest after her home was invaded by an American, John William Yettaw, 53, who also faces trial on charges he violated internal security laws.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize committee called for Suu Kyi’s immediate release.

“Her recent detention in prison is totally unacceptable. She has done nothing wrong,” said the statement from the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which rarely comments on past peace laureates.

The charges against Suu Kyi are widely seen as a pretext for the ruling junta to keep Suu Kyi detained beyond the 2010 national election, part of the junta’s so-called  “roadmap to democracy,” which has been criticized as a ploy for the military regime to remain in power.

Despite sharp criticism and economic sanctions by the US, Europe and other countries, Burma’s generals have enjoyed the support of China and other Asian nations. They invariably march to their own tune and are likely to do so again in the prosecution of Suu Kyi, who they regard as their No 1 enemy.

The charges against Suu Kyi carry a penalty range of three to five years imprisonment.

Saturday, May 16, 2009 | 12:01 a.m. CDT

Tim Johnston

Los Angeles Times: May 16, 2009

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2009/05/16/why-did-missouri-man-risk-visit-myanmars-nobel-winner/

When John Yettaw of Falcon, Mo., slipped into the warm waters of a Rangoon lake last week and swam to the house of detained Myanmar democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, he apparently had little idea of the potential ramifications.

Suu Kyi and Yettaw are now being held in Myanmar’s notorious Insein Prison, along with Suu Kyi’s two housekeepers and her doctor.

Suu Kyi, 63, has been under virtual house arrest for 13 of the 19 years since the ruling military junta refused to recognize her party’s overwhelming victory in the 1990 elections. She is not allowed to have visitors and could face a three- to five-year prison term because of Yettaw’s uninvited intrusion, according to opposition officials.

She could also be convicted of breaking a law requiring citizens to notify authorities if anyone other than a family member wants to stay overnight in their homes.

‘This wretched American’

“Everyone is very angry with this wretched American,” Suu Kyi’s attorney, Kyi Win, told reporters. “He is the cause of all these problems.”

Yettaw has been charged with immigration offenses and entering a restricted zone, which carries a three- to five-year sentence.

Yettaw, 53, has not had an opportunity to explain why he decided to visit Suu Kyi. He has told his family in Missouri that he tried to meet Suu Kyi last year, also by swimming across the lake, but that her staff stopped him.

“I think that’s what motivated him to go back,” his wife, Betty Yettaw, told reporters. “He thought he could be in and out.”

She said that before he left her and his four children, Yettaw had explained that he wanted to return to Asia to write a paper on forgiveness for a psychology course he was taking.

Opposing the new charges

Western leaders and other prominent figures have condemned the new charges against Suu Kyi. A group of politicians, entertainers and writers — including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Madonna, Salman Rushdie, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Elie Wiesel — issued a statement Friday calling Suu Kyi ” the world’s only incarcerated Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.”

“Nineteen years ago, the Myanmar people chose Aung San Suu Kyi to be their next leader. And for most of those 19 years she has been kept under house arrest by the military junta that now runs the country,” the statement said.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that “if the 2010 elections are to have any semblance of credibility, (Suu Kyi) and all political prisoners must be freed to participate.” The top U.N. human rights official, Navanethem Pillay, called for her immediate release, saying, “I deplore Ms. Suu Kyi’s ongoing persecution.”

Also Friday, President Obama renewed U.S. sanctions against the Myanmar government, saying in a letter to Congress that its actions and policies “are hostile to U.S. interests and pose a continuing unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

Like Afghanistan in the 1980s and East Timor in the 1990s, Myanmar — also known as Burma — stirs strong feelings on the part of the many foreigners who follow every twist and turn of the ruling junta’s long effort to strangle democracy.

She’s like a magnet

Aung Zaw, who edits the respected Irrawaddy newsmagazine from exile in northern Thailand, said Suu Kyi, with her combination of apparent physical fragility and steely moral resolve, “is like a magnet that has drawn a lot of people from the West, both intelligent and unintelligent.”

Minka Nijhuis, a Dutch journalist who has written two books about Myanmar, said she was not surprised by Yettaw’s actions.

“He fits the profile,” she said. “It is such a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ story, and it is very easy for people like him to identify with such a good cause.”

But Aung Zaw said sincerity and good intentions are not enough. “Some activists have done tremendous damage, either to individuals or to the movement, and the regime has exploited these activists,” he said.

Among the targets of his ire are two Britons, James Mawdsley, who was arrested in 1999 for distributing pamphlets attacking the junta, and Rachel Goldwyn, who sang a protest song in the streets of Rangoon, also in 1999. They were sentenced to 17 years and seven years, respectively, but between them spent less than a year in prison before they were released and expelled from the country.

Prachatai: May 18, 2009

http://www.prachatai.com/english/node/1216

The Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA), which represents 42 member organizations in Asia condemns the charges leveled against Burmese democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, by the military authorities. FORUM-ASIA calls for an unconditional and immediate release of Suu Kyi, her two aides and around 2,100 political prisoners and urges ASEAN to demand the military authorities to end Suu Kyi’s 13-year detention.

The new charges are said to be in connection with the recent intrusion of an American citizen, John William Yettaw, who swam across Inya Lake and entered the home of Suu Kyi uninvited. He was also not prevented from doing so by the guards. Suu Kyi allegedly failed to report to the authorities about the matter. According to Burmese’s State Protection law, it is mandatory to notify the military authorities about any overnight visitor and foreigners who spend the night in a Burmese home.

On 14 May, Suu Kyi and her two aides were taken from her home and sent to the notorious Inseon Prison on a charge of breaching the conditions of her house arrest order. They appeared before a special court and were charged under article 22 of the State Protection law. Their trial is scheduled for 18 May. The State Protection Act is frequently used against democratic activists. Other members of National League for Democracy (NLD) party have been imprisoned for similar offences.

We have received reports that Suu Kyi is in poor health and has recently been on an intravenous drip. Her doctors have been repeatedly prevented from giving her the care that she requires and her personal physician was arrested a few weeks ago.

“What happened to Suu Kyi is very upsetting. More over, the basis of the new charges is outrageous” said Yap Swee Seng, the Executive Director of FORUM-ASIA. He added that her imprisonment is illegal under international law.

Therefore, FORUM-ASIA strongly calls for ASEAN leaders to immediately take a firm stand by urging Burmese authorities to release Aung San Suu Kyi unconditionally, while demanding that they urgently respect the principles of rule of law, good governance, and democracy as stipulated in the ASEAN Charter, which entered into force on 15 December 2008, said Yap.

“The behavior and abuse of the military authorities is totally unacceptable and must be urgently terminated without delay. The regime must be held accountable. ASEAN country leaders have the responsibility to protect the rights of Burma People by sending an envoy immediately to Burma to ensure the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners. The Burmese government must observe the protection of human rights spelt out in the ASEAN Charter,” he stressed.

Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for almost 14 of the last 19 years at her home in Rangoon. Her house arrest contravenes Articles 9, 10 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the State Protection Act under which she was initially charged in 2003. This act allows for a maximum of five years’ detention, which means that she should have been released in 2008.

This incident is said to be a ploy of the Burmese authorities to prevent her participation in the coming state elections in March 2010. The authorities intend to prohibit any controversy in the elections by prolonging her detention and delaying her release.

Agence France-Presses: May 15, 2009

http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/143540/myanmar-democracy-icon-suu-kyi-goes-on-trial

Myanmar opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi went on trial amid tight security at a notorious prison Monday, facing another five years in detention on charges of harbouring a US man who swam to her home.

Dozens of supporters of the ailing Nobel Peace Prize laureate gathered near Insein prison for the hearing, as riot police set up barbed wire barricades and blocked all roads to the compound near Yangon, witnesses said.

Myanmar’s junta has ignored a storm of international protest to push ahead with charges that the 63-year-old violated the terms of her house arrest, under which she could also be barred from standing in elections due next year.

“The trial has started,” a Myanmar official told AFP on condition of anonymity, without giving any more details about the hearing which is being held behind closed doors.

Security forces barred the ambassadors of Britain, France, Germany and Italy from the jail as they attempted to gain entry to the trial, a western diplomat said.

US national John Yettaw is also on trial over the incident earlier this month in which he used a pair of home-made flippers to swim across a lake to the residence where Aung San Suu Kyi is kept in virtual isolation.

A US embassy car entered the prison compound but a spokesman for the US embassy in Yangon was not immediately able to confirm whether Yettaw was receiving consular assistance.

The trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the last 19 years in detention, comes just days after she was imprisoned at a “guest house” inside the Insein prison compound on charges of breaching security laws.

Her lawyer said that she would protest her innocence.

“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has studied the section of the law under which she was charged and says that she didn’t commit any crime,” lawyer Kyi Win told AFP. Daw is a term of respect in the Burmese language.

“She just felt sorry for this man (Yettaw) as he had leg cramps after he swam across the lake. That’s why she allowed him to stay,” Kyi Win said.

He said Yettaw had also come to the house in 2008 but that the two political assistants who live with Aung San Suu Kyi had asked him to go back, adding that her doctor had informed authorities about the earlier visit at the time.

The two assistants — who have formerly been described as maids — would also be on trial, Kyi Win said.

It was not immediately clear how long the trial would take, with estimates from lawyers and rights groups ranging from one day to several weeks.

The junta, headed by reclusive Senior General Than Shwe, has kept Aung San Suu Kyi in detention for a total of 13 years since 1990, when it refused to recognise her party’s landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections.

Her latest six-year period of detention was due to expire on May 27, but Yettaw’s visit has apparently provided the generals with the ammunition they need to extend her detention past the 2010 elections.

Critics say the polls are a sham that the junta hopes to use to gain legitimacy and consolidate its grip on power, with a constitution forced through last year enshrining a role for the military in any administration.

The constitution also bars Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming president as she had children with her British husband Michael Aris, who died in 1999, and it also prevents those convicted of criminal offences from standing in elections.

Analysts say the junta’s determination to keep her locked up shows that they still perceive the soft-spoken activist as a major threat to their iron rule over Myanmar, which has been controlled by the military since 1962.

The United States has led calls for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi in recent days and US President Barack Obama formally extended sanctions against Myanmar on Friday.

There has however been no official statement from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member. Asian powers China and India have also stayed silent.