Posts

Today’s Internet Not ‘Sustainable,’ Experts Warn

/0 Comments/in , /by

The digital world has been flooded with concerns in recent months over the power of the giant tech companies, particularly Google and Facebook, to control the flow of information. . .

Now Congress has been told that the “digital ecosystem” that exists today is unworkable.

“Two companies dominate the market. The privacy of internet users is under assault. The revenue model that sustained journalism is broken. The ad platforms are manipulated by foreign adversaries. Secrecy and complexity are increasing as accountability is diminished,” said the Electronic Privacy Information Center in a statement delivered to members of Congress. . .

The letter explained: “Today’s digital advertising techniques are very different from traditional advertising models. In the analog world, consumers could readily identify the placement of an ad, the source and its purpose. There was little need for advertisers to gather personal data from users. Perhaps most critically, advertising supported editorial content. Advertising made possible the publication of daily news. Traditional advertising sustained a healthy ecosystem that also made possible the production of news without government subsidy. Much of that has changed,” the letter said.

“There are many problems today with the Digital Advertising Ecosystems – profiling and tracking of internet users, increasing concentration of providers (Google and Facebook), the loss of support for editorial content, discriminatory practices and redlining, preferencing the advertiser’s products over competitor’s, and political ads purchased by foreign advertisers intended [to] undermine democratic elections. (Read more from “Today’s Internet Not ‘Sustainable,’ Experts Warn” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Purge Begins: Cloudflare Terminates Service to Cody Wilson’s GhostGunner Website

/0 Comments/in , /by

A day after Cloudflare removed service to the Daily Stormer, it has now terminated service to Cody Wilson’s website GhostGunner.net, Wilson announced on Twitter:

Yesterday the Electronic Frontier Foundation warned that this behavior to remove offensive speech is a dangerous path for technology companies to go down.

EFF lawyers wrote:

In the wake of Charlottesville, both GoDaddy and Google have refused to manage the domain registration for the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website that, in the words of the Southern Poverty Law Center, is “dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism, and white nationalism.” Subsequently Cloudflare, whose service was used to protect the site from denial-of-service attacks, has also dropped them as a customer, with a telling quote from Cloudflare’s CEO: “Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldn’t be allowed on the Internet. No one should have that power.”

We agree. Even for free speech advocates, this situation is deeply fraught with emotional, logistical, and legal twists and turns. All fair-minded people must stand against the hateful violence and aggression that seems to be growing across our country. But we must also recognize that on the Internet, any tactic used now to silence neo-Nazis will soon be used against others, including people whose opinions we agree with.

It appears that Wilson, the inventor of the first successful 3D-printed gun, is ready for a fight. He goes directly after Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince on Twitter.

[Warning: explicit language]

Never one to back down from a challenge, when PayPal and others dropped service to his Defense Distributed project, Wilson turned to bitcoin to fund his operation. Because of that, Wilson worked to develop an anonymous wallet for the cryptocurrency called Dark Wallet. Wilson is also in a legal battle against the State Department over whether CAD files for printable gun designs fall under gun manufacturing laws.

Wilson continued to savage Cloudfare’s Prince on Twitter:

Wilson also recently launched Hatreon, a tongue-in-cheek competitor to Patreon which recently banned “hate speech” from its platform.

Newsweek wrote this about Hatreon:

Finding funding on the internet is hard—especially if your ideas are despised by almost everyone. Just ask members of the so-called alt-right, the pro-Donald Trump white nationalist movement that received considerable attention during the 2016 presidential election. These guys often get barred from online funding platforms like Patreon, GoFundMe and PayPal.

Enter Hatreon, a new crowdfunding service. Like Patreon, Hatreon allows users to donate money to their favorite internet personalities, while the website takes a small cut. But Hatreon doesn’t have any “hate speech” restrictions. Which is perhaps why it’s attracted controversial figures such as alt-right leader Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin, founder of neo-Nazi news site The Daily Stormer.

In 2014, PayPal cut off Anglin from its service for promoting “hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime,” according to an email from the company that Anglin published on his site. The Daily Stormer is looking for new funding because it is being sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center for organizing a harassment campaign against a Jewish woman in Montana. (In an email, Anglin took issue with the argument that his First Amendment speech could be limited because private businesses are free to deny someone service.)

As an activist entrepreneur, whenever Wilson gets annoyed by petty power, he seems to build a new business to help others expand personal liberty. We look forward to what he builds out of this challenge. (For more from the author of “Purge Begins: Cloudflare Terminates Service to Cody Wilson’s GhostGunner Website” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

We Shouldn’t Give Away the Internet to Authoritarian Regimes

/0 Comments/in , /by

The essence of human freedom, of civilization itself, is cooperation: cooperation between friends and family; businesses and customers; entrepreneurs and employees.

History and human experience teach that humans cooperate best when they do so voluntarily, without government coercion. That is why I fully support the eventual transition of control over the internet from the Department of Commerce and to a private entity.

But I also worry that President Barack Obama is hastily rushing the current transfer of power to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which could make it easier for the United Nations to take over the internet.

Today, the internet is so vast and ubiquitous that it is hard to imagine it existing in any other form. But for the first few decades of the internet’s existence, the basic roadmap for navigating the internet—the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the system that allocates and records the unique numerical addresses to computers—was managed by just one man on a voluntary basis.

In 1998, the Commerce Department began contracting with ICANN, a California nonprofit corporation, to take over management of IANA and the internet’s domain name system. For the most part, the Commerce Department has allowed ICANN to govern itself, but it has always maintained the authority to pull the nonprofit’s contract, which allowed the federal government to ensure that its contracting partner did not stray from its original mission.

But some governments do not like ICANN’s current hands-off approach to internet regulation. They want more control over how internet traffic is managed and what domain names are allowed to exist.

Just five years after ICANN was created, the United Nations established a Working Group on Internet Governance “to investigate and make proposals for action … on the governance of Internet.” And in 2012 at the World Conference on International Telecommunications, several authoritarian regimes—including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia—called for the “sovereign right” of governments to “establish and implement public policy, including international policy, on matters of Internet governance.”

The United States firmly resisted these calls for more international control over the internet until 2013 when Edward Snowden leaked details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, which led the Obama administration to believe it could not maintain international support for the current system. So in March 2014, the Commerce Department announced it would be fully transferring the internet’s names and numbers functions to ICANN. In other words, the federal government would relinquish its leverage over ICANN by giving up its ability to renew—or threaten to cancel—ICANN’s contract.

Normally, I would applaud the loss of federal government leverage over a private entity. But in this case, there are some ominous signs that ICANN is not ready for the role it is about to take on.

ICANN is currently involved in litigation over alleged improper interference from governments who objected to how the organization awarded the .africa domain name. And the organization was recently admonished by an independent review panel for making decisions that were “cavalier” and “simply not credible” in relation to an application for domain names.

Also, it is unclear whether the new bylaws ICANN is set to adopt for the transition will be strong enough to prevent Russia and China from exerting more control over internet governance.

For these reasons, I am working closely with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and other senators to delay the final transfer of internet governance to ICANN. There is no reason this transfer has to happen this year. There is no reason not to allow ICANN to work through its new governance structure on a trial basis for two years so we can make sure it will run smoothly and in a truly independent manner.

If we rush this transition and ICANN fails, it will be nearly impossible to get the internet back from the authoritarian regimes that are pushing for more control.

That is simply not a risk we can take. (For more from the author of “We Shouldn’t Give Away the Internet to Authoritarian Regimes” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Ted Cruz’s Fight to Protect the Internet From Authoritarian Regimes

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Obama administration’s decision to give up U.S. control of regulating the internet is likely illegal, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said.

“The Obama administration does not have the authorization from Congress,” Cruz said Thursday, speaking at a Heritage Foundation event on internet freedom. “And yet they are endeavoring to give away this valuable, critical property. To give it away with no authorization at all. That ought to trouble all of us.”

The Texas Republican added:

We built the internet and America maintains it as free for all. We don’t use it in an imperialist manner to impose our views on others. We maintain it as an oasis of freedom.

Time is running out for Cruz, however, in what he considers his fight to keep the internet free from censorship by less-open foreign countries.

In June, Cruz introduced a bill that would keep the U.S. Commerce Department in an oversight role of the body that assigns internet names and addresses. That body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, is a nonprofit organization that gives out domain names and numbers for the internet.

A domain name is the address of a person or an organization online. So when someone types dailysignal.com, he or she is brought to The Daily Signal website and not an imposter. One of ICANN’s responsibilities is to ensure that a specific domain name is not assigned to multiple organizations.

At issue is whether the U.S. should give up its role in overseeing ICANN. Supporters of the move say it is symbolic and that no single government or organization should have that much power over the internet. Cruz and other opponents say the move is too risky and that authoritarian regimes could gain influence over how the internet works.

Since ICANN’s creation in 1998, it has operated under a contract with a Commerce Department entity called the National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

With the department’s advice, ICANN has carried out so-called Internet Assigned Names Authority functions under the zero-cost contract. These functions include assigning domain names. Prior to 1998, one University of California computer scientist carried out these functions.

From the beginning, the United States has planned to transition oversight of ICANN from the Commerce Department to some sort of international body.

The contract between the Commerce Department and ICANN was set to expire in 2015, but the department delayed the move. That transition is now scheduled to begin in September.

Cruz wants to stop that transition altogether. In the event at The Heritage Foundation, he made the case for his bill.

“When it comes to basic principles of freedom, letting people speak online without being censored—that ought to bring everyone together,” he said.

Cruz addressed young Americans specifically, saying this issue is of critical importance:

But young people, we’re talking about the ability of the next generation and generations to come to speak your mind without the government giving prior approval.

The Protecting Internet Freedom Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and James Lankford, R-Okla., would prevent the U.S. from giving up oversight of ICANN unless Congress passes legislation specifically authorizing the transition. A companion bill in the House was introduced by Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis.

The Cruz bill cites Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution, which gives Congress the exclusive power to makes rules concerning the territory and property of the United States. The domain names .gov and .mil are property of the United States, and Cruz says they should remain under the control of the U.S. government.

Brett Schaefer, The Heritage Foundation’s Jay Kingham fellow in international regulatory affairs, testified on this issue in May before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Schaefer discussed the uncertainty surrounding the new ICANN structure. Schaefer said the U.S. should retain some oversight until ICANN can prove the new plan will work smoothly. He testified:

To that end, I recommend a ‘soft extension’ of the existing contractual relationship—one that allows ICANN two years to demonstrate that the new procedures it is putting in place actually work to hold the corporation accountable. The transition to a multistakeholder global system is too important to get wrong and too important to rush.

Schaefer took part in a panel discussion following Cruz’s remarks at Heritage, joined by Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom; tech lawyers Paul McGrady and Philip Corwin; and Jonathan Zuck, president of the App Association.

A 2-year-old fact sheet on the ICANN website answers basic questions about the transition.

“This announcement does not affect internet users and their use of the internet,” it says. “However, all internet users have a stake in how the internet is run, and it is therefore important to get involved.”

Supporters of the transition say it is mostly symbolic. The U.S. government needs to cut its ties to ICANN, the Los Angeles Times said in an editorial:

But keeping the Commerce Department’s nominal role in domain names would only encourage other governments to remake the internet to their liking, either through technological barriers or through intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations. If it truly loves the open internet, Congress will let it go.

Cruz’s bill was referred June 8 to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Unless it or similar legislation passes and is signed by President Obama, the transition will begin Sept. 30. (For more from the author of “Ted Cruz’s Fight to Protect the Internet From Authoritarian Regimes” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

This Company’s Ad-Blocking Software Could Threaten Free Internet

/1 Comment/in , /by

Safari-browser[After Apple launched] its new software update for the iPhone, users [are offered] the chance to surf the mobile Web without annoying ads cluttering up their screen.

But Apple’s support for ad-blocking technology is ringing alarm bells on Madison Avenue, where critics warn it threatens not only the lifeblood of their business — but also the economic underpinnings of the free Internet.

“We don’t think ad blocking is right,” Scott Cunningham, senior vice president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, told The Post.

The rise of ad blockers is one of the biggest sea changes to affect the Internet ad business in decades, Cunningham said. For years, publishers have made what they believe is a fair trade-off with readers.

“Advertising is the economic engine that drives the free Internet,” Cunningham said. “The reality is the last 20 years have seen people developing content online for distribution, and consumers have opted in for that free content.” (Read more from “This Company’s Ad-Blocking Software Could Threaten Free Internet” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Cornell Researchers Create Online Simulator to Map Zombie Outbreak for Real Medical Purposes

/1 Comment/in , /by

zombie outbreakWhile tools like shotguns, baseball bats and flame throwers might prove invaluable during the zombie apocalypse, there’s another tool — which takes a more cerebral approach to the problem — that might also come in handy. Infection-mapping tool Zombietown USA lets you chart the spread of the zombie outbreak and know exactly where you should flee to last the longest when the brain eaters start taking over the US. You can even adjust sliders to account for different variables, so your escape route can be the most efficient possible.

Though Zombietown USA seems like a gag, it actually grew out of hard science. As we reported earlier, a group of researchers at Cornell University, inspired by the book “World War Z” by Max Brooks, modeled the way in which a zombie outbreak might spread and determined your best bet was to run for the hills.

Zombietown USA grew out of their research and accompanies a paper graduate students Matt Bierbaum, Alex Alemi and several of their peers recently submitted to arXiv, an online depository for physics papers. The paper, “You Can Run, You Can Hide: The Epidemiology and Statistical Mechanics of Zombies,” uses zombies as a basis to model any disease, including ones that might actually strike.

“We wanted to study zombies using many of the scientific tools used for actual disease, albeit in a fun context,” Bierbaum, told me. “We hope in this way to introduce the real methods and science behind diseases to a broader audience and show the fun in science.”

“Zombies, while maybe not a ‘real’ disease, is a unique model of diseases compared to those that are traditionally studied,” Bierbaum said. “In standard disease models as well as zombies, an infection takes place when there is contact between an infected host and a healthy one — someone sneezing on someone else, or a zombie biting a healthy human. In standard disease models, infected individuals recover when they get better on their own. A zombie, however, only recovers when it is actively killed (canonically, by destroying the brain).” (Read more from “Cornell Researchers Create Online Simulator to Map Zombie Outbreak” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Obama’s Net Neutrality Plan Could Lead to United Nations Control of Your Internet

/2 Comments/in , /by

By Brendan Sasso. The U.S. government’s plan to enact strong net neutrality regulations could embolden authoritarian regimes like China and Russia to seize more power over the Internet through the United Nations, a key Senate Republican warned Wednesday.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune of South Dakota argued that by claiming more authority over Internet access for net neutrality, the Federal Communications Commission will undermine the ability of the U.S. to push back against international plots to control the Internet and censor content.

Countries like Russia already have made it clear that they want the International Telecommunications Union or another United Nations body to have more power over the Internet, Thune said.

“It seems like reclassifying broadband, as the administration is doing, is losing a valuable argument,” Thune said at his panel’s hearing on Internet governance. “How do you prevent ITU involvement when you’re pushing to reclassify the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act, and is everyone aware of that inherent contradiction?”

On Thursday, the FCC is set to vote on net neutrality regulations that would declare Internet access a “telecommunications service” under Title II. Advocates, including President Obama, argue that the move is the only way the FCC can enact rules that will hold up to legal challenges in court. The rules aim to prevent Internet providers from acting as “gatekeepers” and controlling what content users can access online. (Read more about the net neutrality plan HERE)

____________________________________________________________

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai: Net Neutrality is a “Solution That Won’t Work to a Problem That Doesn’t Exist”

By Nick Gillespie & Todd Krainin. Net Neutrality is “a solution that won’t work to a problem that doesn’t exist,” says Ajit Pai, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Pai is an oustpoken opponent of expanding government control of the internet, including FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s plan to regulate Internet Service Providers (ISPs) under the same Title II rules that are used to govern telephone-service providers as public utilities. Under current FCC regulations, ISPs are considered providers of “information services” and subject to essentially no federal regulation.

He is also sharply critical of President Barack Obama’s very public push to influence policy at the FCC, which is technically an independent agency. Last year, it was widely believed that Wheeler, a former head of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, would not push for Title II. Pai calls the president’s actions—which included “creating a YouTube video of with very specific prescriptions as to what this agency should do”—unprecedented in his experience. Coupled with the fact that “the agency suddenly chang[ed]course from where it was to mimic the president’s plan,” says Pai, “suggests that the independence of the agency has been compromised to some extent.”

The FCC is scheduled to vote Thursday, February 26 on Wheeler’s plan. (Read more from this story HERE)

______________________________________________________________

Soros, Ford shovel $196 million to ‘net neutrality’ groups, staff to White House

By Paul Bedard. Liberal philanthropist George Soros and the Ford Foundation have lavished groups supporting the administration’s “net neutrality” agenda, donating $196 million and landing proponents on the White House staff, according to a new report.

And now, as the Federal Communications Commission nears approving a type of government control over the Internet, the groups are poised to declare victory in the years-long fight, according to the report from MRC Business, an arm of the conservative media watchdog, the Media Research Center.

“The Ford Foundation, which claims to be the second-largest private foundation in the U.S., and Open Society Foundations, founded by far-left billionaire George Soros, have given more than $196 million to pro-net neutrality groups between 2000 and 2013,” said the report, authored by Media Research Center’s Joseph Rossell, and provided to Secrets.


These left-wing groups not only impacted the public debate and funded top liberal think tanks from the Center for American Progress to Free Press. They also have direct ties to the White House and regulatory agencies. At least five individuals from these groups have ascended to key positions at the White House and FCC,” said the report which included funding details to pro-net neutrality advocates. (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

The Internet is Not Broken and Obama Does Not Need to Fix it [+video]

/4 Comments/in , /by

By Ajit Pai and Joshua Wright. If you like your wireless plan, you should be able to keep it. But new federal regulations may take away your freedom to choose the best broadband plan for you. It’s all part of the federal government’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet like a public utility — a plan President Barack Obama asked the Federal Communications Commission to implement in November and that is coming up for a vote Feb. 26.

While the plan contains no shortage of regulations, the most problematic may be the new “Internet conduct” rule. It’s a vague rule that gives the FCC almost unfettered discretion to micromanage virtually every aspect of the Internet, including the choices that consumers have for accessing it. If a company doesn’t want to offer an expensive, unlimited data plan, it could find itself in the FCC’s cross hairs.

But restricting service plan options is inherently anti-competitive and anti-consumer. The inevitable results will be higher prices and less service for consumers along with an especially adverse impact on small providers and upstart competitors trying to differentiate themselves in a crowded market. (Read more about how the internet is not broken HERE)

________________________________________________________

Why Can’t the Public See Obama’s Proposed Internet Regulations?

By Mark Hemingway. Republican senators Mike Lee, Ben Sasse, and Rand Paul have all been high profile opponents of the Obama administrations current plan to regulate the internet — in particular, Lee has called the regulation a government “takeover” of the internet and says it amounts to a “a massive tax increase on the middle class, being passed in the dead of night without the American public really being made aware of what is going on.”

(Read more from this story HERE)

_________________________________________________________

Billionare Mark Cuban Says Net Neutrality Will ‘F*** Everything Up’

By Dawn Chmielewski. Billionaire investor and ABC “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban unloaded on the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to fundamentally change how it oversees the open Internet.

“That will f*** everything up,” said the voluble Cuban in remarks Wednesday at the Code/Media conference at The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, Calif.

In early February, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed tough new rules for Internet lines that would prohibit wired and wireless broadband providers from collecting payment to cut to the front of the line, or blocking and throttling lawful content and services.

Cuban said this bid to significantly expand the agency’s authority to regulate broadband providers is nothing more than an attack on giant media companies like Comcast*.

“Net neutrality is just a demonization of big companies,” Cuban said. (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

A Teenager’s Horrific ‘Cure’ to End His Internet Addiction

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Telegraph By Tom Phillips. A Chinese teenager has been rushed to hospital after chopping off his hand in a desperate attempt to cure his addiction to the internet . . .

Hoping to rid himself of the vice, one 19-year-old from the city of Nantong in Jiangsu province took drastic measures of his own. He hacked his left hand off, according to a report on the Jiangsu TV channel.

“We cannot accept what has happened. It was completely out of the blue. He was a smart boy,” his mother, who declined to be identified, told reporters.

The woman said she had gone to her son’s bedroom at around 11pm last Wednesday only to find that he had disappeared. She found a handwritten note on the bed in which he should have been sleeping . . .

By then, her son, who was identified only as “Little Wang” had already smuggled a kitchen knife from their home and snuck out. Safely out of sight, the teenager severed his left hand at the wrist. He called a taxi to take him a nearby A&E and left the hand lying on the ground. (Read more about the teenagers attempt to end his internet addiction HERE)

_______________________________________________________

Teenage Boy Nicknamed ‘Devil Hands’ Undergoes Life Changing Surgery

By Victoria Burt. A teenager was the victim of cruel taunts and jibes after being born with a rare illness that meant his arms were permanently extended above his heads.

Schoolmates called 17-year-old Mamadou “devil hand” or the “claw” and he was shunned from society because of his unusual disability, the cause of which is not known.

But for the first time in his life, the teenage boy is able to move his arms after an international charity Mamadou calls his “guardian angels” heard about his plight and carried out surgery for free to release his arms.

For the first time in his life, his hands and arms are not standing vertical – and he has been reunited with his family who sent him 300 miles away to beg because people would feel sorry for him and they desperately needed money. (Read more from this story HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

North Korean Internet "Erased From the Global Map"; US Attack Suspected

/9 Comments/in , /by

Photo credit: kalleboo

Photo credit: kalleboo

By Dana Ford. North Korea’s Internet was back up Tuesday after a more than nine-hour outage, according to Dyn Research, a company that monitors Internet performance.

The disruption came amid an escalating war of words between the United States and North Korea over a massive cyberattack on Sony Pictures.

“Usually there are isolated blips, not continuous connectivity problems. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are absorbing some sort of attack presently,” Doug Madory, director of Internet analysis at Dyn Research, said when the Internet was down.

Matthew Prince, president of CloudFlare, a performance and security company, described the disruption as if “all the routes to get to North Korea just disappeared.

“It’s as if North Korea got erased from the global map of the Internet,” he said.

___________________________________________________________

Canadians Fight Back Against North Korea, Plan ‘The Interview’ Showings

By Natalie Johnson. Sony Pictures’ controversial cancellation of a new movie, “The Interview,” following North Korean terrorist threats has inspired planned independent screenings in Toronto and Montreal.

Taylor Scollon’s Toronto Facebook event “The Interview Screening/Suck It, Kim Jong Un/Liberty in North Korea Fundraiser” launched Dec. 19 and has already garnered 4,400 “attending” responses.

“The North Korean regime maintains power through fear, and I think it’s troubling that they are (successfully at this point) using fear to suppress criticism and satire, even outside their borders,” Scollon told Mashable.

He added that the movie’s cancellation is a “good opportunity to raise awareness about the ongoing plight of the North Korean people.” Read more from this story HERE.