Weekend Box: Ukraine, Online Safety bill & more
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business, and cultural news from around the world.
UKRAINE: RUSSIA’S WAR ON TRUTH
On Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a virtual address to Congress, in which he showed the US lawmakers a graphic compilation of clips of the devastation Russia had wrought on Ukraine. On the same day, Meta’s Head of Security Policy Nathaniel Gleicher tweeted that a deepfake video of the president, in which he appeared to call for Ukrainians to lay down arms, had been removed from Facebook. The events of the day are symbolic of the bitter fight running parallel to the war in Ukraine; that is, a fight for the truth.
The deepfake video was initially posted to Telegram and Russian social media platform VKontakte. Copies of it, which can be viewed online, show a noticeably ill-proportioned, digitally recreated version of the president surrendering to Russia, and urging fellow Ukrainians to do the same. While it has yet to be confirmed if it originated in Russia, the video was clearly intended to sow confusion and erode confidence in the truth of what is happening in the conflict, both within Russia and without, which President Putin could use to his advantage.
However, in Russia, it appears the Kremlin’s own attempts to control the narrative of what is happening in Ukraine are weakening as well. In a striking moment earlier this week, the illusion of the party line - that there is no conflict in Ukraine, but a ‘special military operation’ to demilitarise a dangerous regime - was shattered on a major Russian television channel. During a live news broadcast on Channel One, producer Marina Ovsyannikova held up a sign demanding that the war on Ukraine be stopped and imploring viewers not to ‘believe the propaganda.’ Ovsyannikova was subsequently arrested, interrogated for fourteen hours, and fined 30,000 roubles. Although she says that she now fears for her safety, having defied the Kremlin’s control of state media and the ‘truth’ it presents, the producer says it was ‘impossible’ for her to stay silent about the conflict. A number of her colleagues at Channel One have reportedly resigned following her protest.
Russia continues to make arrests at anti-war protests across the country, with protesters who have been taken in by police numbering in the thousands. The endurance of the anti-war movement, and the fact it has accomplished the feat of making itself heard on state media, show that much like the war in Ukraine, Russia’s war on the truth may not be so easy to win as it had anticipated.
NAZANIN ZAGHARI-RATCLIFFE: HOME FREE
After six tortuous years in Tehran separated from her daughter and loved ones, British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe returned to the UK in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested at Imam Khomeini airport in 2016 under the spurious charge of plotting to overthrow the Iranian Government. Zaghari-Ratcliff was incarcerated at the infamously harsh Evin prison for four years, subsequently spending two years under house arrest. Throughout this time her husband Richard Ratcliffe staged hunger strikes in protest of her detainment, refusing to obey the Foreign Office’s pleas for his silence. While it has been denied by both the Iranian and British governments, it is widely believed that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s detainment was a form of retaliation for the UK’s cancellation of the Chieftain tanks deal in 1979, which cost Iran £400m.
Diplomatic attempts by the British government to secure the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe were futile. When serving as foreign secretary, Boris Johnson made matters worse by falsely stating that she was training as a journalist in Iran. However, on Wednesday Liz Truss set herself apart from her predecessors. Addressing the House of Commons, she triumphantly announced that Zaghari-Ratcliffe would be released with fellow detainee Anoosheh Ashoori, and “reunited with her family.” While Truss expressed her gratitude to the family’s constituency MP, who had tirelessly campaigned for her release, she also made sure she had her fair share of the limelight; the word “I” was mentioned at least fifteen times. She was evasive as to how she had actually managed to pull off this act of high level diplomacy, however, she noted the serendipitous timing of the repayment of the £400m Chieftain debt, which has led to much speculation.
However, regardless of what was behind this diplomatic move, we believe that what truly matters and what should capture our attention is the personal: a family was reunited after years of separation, agony, and emotional turmoil, and an innocent woman’s wrongful six-year detainment has finally ended. This is an instance where the personal outweighs the political. This is, above all, a human story.
BARISTAS BUCKING THE SYSTEM
Howard Schulz, who transformed Starbucks from an eleven-store Seattle chain into a global, multi-million dollar behemoth, is returning to the chain to replace Kevin Johnson as its CEO after Johnson announced his retirement.
Chair of the Starbucks board Mellody Hobson told the Wall Street Journal that Johnson’s departure from the coffee empire is not the result of internal pressure or outside push, insisting that it was a “deliberate” decision. Johnson’s exit comes soon after he failed to prevent the formation of a union at a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York; the first successful unionisation in the chain’s fifty-year history. The victory of Buffalo’s baristas has catalysed a unionisation movement, which has spread through American Starbucks locations like wildfire. Recently, workers at six other locations have voted to unionise over the company’s objections, and 130 baristas spanning across twenty-seven states have petitioned to hold votes for unionisation.
If this uprising wasn’t bad enough for Schulz, he is also facing the challenge of managing the damage from the National Labour Relations Board’s (NLRB) accusations against Starbucks. The NLRB have brought a case against the chain alleging it breached federal law by surveilling, “interfering with, restraining, and coercing” employees involved in efforts to unionise at its coffeehouse in Arizona. Unsurprisingly, the company denies participating in any illegal anti-union activities. However, with more than twenty similar cases filed against Starbucks for union-busting tactics and poor labour practices targeted at union supporters and workers, the odds of it winning the case appear increasingly unlikely. If Starbucks loses, it will be required to advise employees of their rights to participate in protected workplace activities.
In light of the victories at Starbucks, as well the outdoor outfitters REI and The New York Times, union strategists hope that a larger unionisation movement will take hold in America and positively impact millions of workers. “We have a moment right now,” said Stuart Applebaum, President of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union. However, US labour rights groups are aware of the challenge that they face to implement lasting change. Acknowledging the vigour of anti-union campaigns, executive director of Jobs with Justice Erica Smiley stated: “The pressure is on us as a movement to help move this forward. It's really an uphill battle."
ONLINE SAFETY: DOES THIS FIT THE BILL?
This week the long-awaited Online Safety Bill was introduced in parliament, aiming to mark a milestone in the fight for a new digital age where tech giants are held accountable for the safety of their users in the UK. The original draft of the Bill was published in 2021, and one of its chief aims is to stop children from accessing inappropriate and harmful content.
The Bill will seek to subject social media platforms to a legal ‘duty of care’, calling on them to protect children, tackle illegal activity, and uphold their stated terms and conditions. If it is passed, regulator Ofcom will have the power to fine companies failing to comply with the laws up to ten percent of their annual global turnover, force them to improve their practices, and block non-compliant sites. Alongside a raft of other new measures, the government also announced executives whose companies fail to co-operate could now face prosecution or jail time within two months of the Bill becoming law, instead of two years as it was previously drafted.
A problem with the Bill is that it tries to be many things to many people, and there is a throng of voices who say that it either goes too far, or not far enough. Civil liberties groups have said the plan is tantamount to an ‘Orwellian censorship machine’ in its plans to legally mandate content moderation, with too much ambiguity around what is defined as ‘harmful’ or ‘illegal’ content. Critics of Big Tech argue that it doesn’t go far enough to tackle platforms’ business models and algorithms. Even child protection charities like the NSPCC fear the Bill has moved too far away from its beginnings as a child protection measure and must be toughened up to prevent abuse.
However, one thing everyone can agree on is that the bill, which was first proposed in 2019 by Theresa May’s government, has taken far too long, particularly given the speed at which technology is developing and platforms are growing. Whilst the Bill is evidently a balancing act between competing pressures, the issues it takes on are urgent, and even if it is not perfect, it must be seen as an important first step towards sensible reform.
DUA LIPA’S DUAL LAWSUITS
In 2020, British singer and songwriter Dua Lipa landed multiple hits with her sophomore album Future Nostalgia, which soundtracked listeners’ escapist fantasies during that year with hooky, eighties-influenced dance-pop. One single in particular was marked as a modern classic on release: ‘Levitating’, which this week logged its seventieth week on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. However, in the last two weeks, the song that helped to establish her as one of modern pop’s major figures has been hit with not one, but two copyright infringement lawsuits.
Lawyers for songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer allege that the “signature melody” of ‘Levitating’ duplicates one that features in two songs the pair co-wrote: Cory Daye’s 1979 song ‘Wiggle and Giggle All Night’ and the 1980 Miguel Bosé song ‘Don Diablo’. While their lawyers have made no claims as to which of their collaborations Lipa and her co-writers lifted from, they argue that the availability of both songs on streaming means plagiarism could easily have occurred. This came mere days after South Florida reggae band Artikal Sound System filed a lawsuit alleging Lipa and co-writers “listened to and copied” their 2017 song ‘Live Your Life’ when writing ‘Levitating.’
While Artikal Sound System argue the sonic resemblances between their song and Lipa’s are obvious enough to warrant their lawsuit, Brown and Linzer’s lawyers have tried to strengthen their case on the basis of artistic inspiration. Pointing to interviews Lipa gave at the time of her album’s release where, in their words, she “admitted …[to] deliberately emulat[ing] prior eras of music,” the lawyers argue that "[i]n seeking nostalgic inspiration, Defendants copied Plaintiffs' creation without attribution." The argument recalls the infamous case of songwriters Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, who were found to have infringed on the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s classic ‘Got to Give it Up’ with their song ‘Blurred Lines’ on the basis of a similar “musical style.”
Whether something so nebulous as inspiration can be used to justify copyright infringement remains to be seen, as do the ramifications for artists looking to the past to fuel their creativity. Lipa has yet to publicly comment on the two lawsuits filed against her.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audley.uk.com.
For now, that’s the weekend box officially closed.