News Round-Up: U.S. Charges Ex-Health Official in COVID-19 Records Conspiracy; Japan Jails Plot Spoiler; Turkey Targets VPNs
Twice a week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye – or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past few days, the following topics attracted our attention:
U.S. Charges Ex-Health Official in COVID-19 Records Conspiracy
Japan Jails Man for Describing Movie Plots
Turkey Wants to Ban “Unapproved” VPNs
U.S. Charges Ex-Health Official in COVID-19 Records Conspiracy
In the United States, a former senior official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), David M. Morens, 78, has been charged with conspiracy. According to the indictment, he aided and abetted the conspiracy and destroyed, altered, falsified, concealed, removed, or tampered with documents, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
From 2006 to 2022, David M. Morens, 78, served as a scientific advisor to the director of NIAID - who at the time was Anthony Fauci - and advised senior staff on policy matters. He drafted recommendations and solutions that influenced the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and guided staff on epidemiological studies and infectious disease issues. Morens also gathered information from grant recipients and researchers to verify facts about the coronavirus. As a result, Morens was aware of the NIH and NIAID’s prior coronavirus research. By virtue of his position, he relayed this information to NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, who in turn conveyed it to the President, Congress, and the public.
According to the indictment, Morens conspired with at least two accomplices to commit multiple acts of fraud during the coronavirus pandemic. For example, after the government ended funding for bat coronavirus research (see also here), Morens promised to help restore that funding and to fight the claim that COVID-19 leaked from a lab (see also here, here, here, here, here). Anticipating that such correspondence might be made public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Morens agreed in writing with his accomplices to conceal their communications. To do so, they used Morens’s personal Gmail account instead of his official NIH email (see also here). In private emails, the parties exchanged non-public NIH information and discussed how to influence the NIH to fund a certain company. They sent each other drafts of letters intended for NIH leadership and relayed information to a high-ranking NIAID official through covert channels. According to the indictment, all of these actions were part of Morens’s official duties, and he should have conducted them through official channels and systems.
In addition, Morens and one co-conspirator are accused of agreeing to accept illegal gifts. The accomplice gave Morens wine as a reward for his “secret shenanigans” and had it delivered to Morens’s home in Maryland. Morens, in turn, wrote a scientific commentary in a prestigious medical journal claiming that COVID-19 was of natural origin. The co-conspirator had also promised Morens a host of other gifts, such as meals at Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, New York, and Washington.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche explained: “As alleged in the indictment, Dr. Morens and his co-conspirators deliberately concealed information and falsified records in an effort to suppress alternative theories regarding the origins of COVID-19. Government officials have a solemn duty to provide honest, well-grounded facts and advice in service of the public interest — not to advance their own personal or ideological agendas.” According to U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Kelly O. Hayes, officials undermine public trust and the integrity of institutions when they flout the law by concealing their communications. “This was especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic when transparency was needed most,” she added, vowing to continue holding accountable those who attempt to evade their obligations for personal gain.
If convicted, Morens faces a significant number of years in prison for multiple crimes. The maximum sentence for conspiracy against the government is 5 years; it is 20 years for destroying, altering, or forging documents; and 3 years for concealing, removing, or tampering with documents. That said, maximum sentences are often unlikely, as penalties for violations of federal laws are usually lighter than the maximum.
Japan jails man for describing movie plots
The Tokyo District Court found Wataru Takeuchi guilty of copyright infringement, more specifically for “creating a new work by making creative modifications to the original while preserving its essential characteristics.” For this, the court sentenced the man to 18 months in prison and a fine of 1 million yen (about 5,000 euros). In practice, however, Takeuchi merely managed a website where he published articles by himself and other authors that described films and TV series in detail, as reported by Reclaim The Net.
The case began with two articles published on the website. The first concerned the film “Godzilla Minus One,” and the second covered the anime “Overlord III.” The authors of both articles were external to the website, rather than Takeuchi himself.
Japanese media giants Toho (owner of Godzilla) and Kadokawa Shoten (publisher of Overlord) filed a joint lawsuit regarding these two articles through the Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA). The lawsuit is based on a law that prohibits the creation of “a new work by making creative modifications to the original while preserving its essential characteristics.” However, “essential characteristics” are defined vaguely, leaving the plaintiffs with broad discretion.
In this case, CODA argued that combining dialogue transcripts, scene descriptions, and press photos creates something equivalent to watching the film. This is argued to deter paying customers, who, after reading an accurate description, may no longer watch the original. “Numerous websites that extract text from movies and other content have been identified and are considered problematic as so-called ‘spoiler sites’,” said CODA. “While these actions tend to be perceived as less serious than piracy sites or illegal uploads that upload the content itself, they are clear copyright infringements that go beyond the scope of fair use and are serious crimes.” CODA does recognize fair use, but considers any sufficiently detailed description to fall outside its scope.
The decisive factor in the Takeuchi case appears to be the fact that his website generated revenue. In 2023, it reportedly brought in 38 million yen (approx. 206,000 euros) in advertising revenue. Accordingly, it was found that the man was able to generate revenue by publishing copyrighted intellectual property, and this in turn negated the argument that the author was dealing with the work for its own sake.
However, the vast majority of entertainment journalism publishes advertisements, and most reviews and summaries describe content. As a result, the Takeuchi case has now raised the question of how much description is too much, where the line of acceptable coverage lies, and when an author has overstepped and is liable to punishment. According to critics, the law does not provide an answer; rather, the line is drawn by CODA, film studios, and prosecutors. In any case, CODA has made it clear that the Takeuchi case will not be the only one, as the association plans to “strive for the proper protection of copyrights and implement effective measures against similar websites.”
Turkey Wants to Ban “Unapproved” VPNs
Turkey plans to make the use of anonymous VPNs illegal. An “approved” VPN would refer to a registered service, while unlicensed VPN services would be illegal. Authorities also want to require that all approved VPN providers log user activity and provide this data to Turkish authorities upon request, according to Reclaim The Net.
According to officials, this is part of a broader package of measures aimed at protecting children. The main motivations are reportedly school attacks in Şanlıurfa and Kahramanmaraş, where the attackers were allegedly interested in violent mobile games. In addition to VPN restrictions, the plan includes SIM cards for children that parents can control and limits on the number of mobile numbers registered under a single person’s name.
Critics argue that a VPN that logs user activity and transmits data is no longer a VPN, but merely another surveillance channel, and anonymity would be criminalized by law. At the same time, child protection is seen as merely a pretext, and the licensed VPN infrastructure being created would actually affect all adults. It would ensure that Turkish users cannot bypass web blocks with a “wrong” VPN or keep their online activities hidden from the state. Only those VPNs that agree to store data and share it with authorities would be usable. In other words, a user’s online activity would be logged, making it possible to track who they communicate with, what they read, and their entire online path. The license would also give authorities the power to decide which service providers qualify at all, and VPN providers that refuse to log data would simply be excluded from the market. However, anyone using an “unapproved” service would be breaking the law.
According to critics, a VPN that records user activity and transmits data is no longer a VPN, but merely another surveillance channel, and anonymity would be criminalized by law. At the same time, child protection is merely a pretext, and the licensed VPN infrastructure being created will actually affect all adults, ensuring that Turkish users cannot bypass web blocks with a “wrong” VPN or keep their online activities hidden from the state. Only those VPNs that agree to store data and share it with the authorities would be usable. In other words, a user’s online activity would be logged, and it would be possible to track who they communicated with, what they read, and their entire online path. The license would also give authorities the power to decide which service providers qualify at all, and VPN providers that refuse to log data would simply be excluded from the market. However, anyone using an “unapproved” service would be breaking the law.
Proton VPN CEO David Peterson confirmed that demand for the service in Turkey has surged following the news, and that the company is also seeing connection blocks in the country. Proton VPN is one of 27 service providers whose services are already restricted in Turkey but are still used there. Consequently, the company has observed an increase in user numbers before. For example, in March of last year, when the government restricted social media platforms, the number of Proton registrations increased by 1,100% compared to the baseline. According to Proton, Vodafone Turkey - which controls approximately one-third of the country’s mobile internet - has been the most prominent actor in these incidents. Proton estimates that the cause of previous outages is more likely due to the operator’s DNS manipulations than to actual technical failures.