ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, is a punishing, secretly negotiated copyright treaty that could send ordinary people to jail for copyright infringement. ACTA would establish a new international legal framework that countries can join on a voluntary basis and would create its own governing body outside existing international institution. ACTA has been negotiated in secret during the past few years.
Sounds somewhat worrying to me. ACTA has several features that raise significant potential concerns for consumers’ privacy and civil liberties for innovation and the free flow of information on the Internet legitimate commerce. What is ACTA? document gives details on the agreement. The EU will soon vote on ACTA.
La Quadrature ACTA web page says that ACTA would impose new criminal sanctions forcing Internet actors to monitor and censor online communications. It is seen as a major threat to freedom of expression online and creates legal uncertainty for Internet companies. For some details read La Quadrature’s analysis of ACTA’s digital chapter.
La Quadrature du Net – NO to ACTA video (one side of the view):
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published “Speak out against ACTA“, stating that the ACTA threatens free software by creating a culture “in which the freedom that is required to produce free software is seen as dangerous and threatening rather than creative, innovative, and exciting.
ACTA has been negotiated in secret during the past few years. It seem that nobody can objectively tell us what ACTA is going to do. You should oppose it for this exact reason. What exactly it will do is so multi-faceted and so deeply buried in legal speak it requires a book or two to explain.
If you don’t like this you need to do something on that quick. The European Parliament will soon decide whether to give its consent to ACTA, or to reject it once and for all. Based on the information (maybe biased view) I have read I hope the result will be rejection.
Another worrying related thing is Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The bill expands the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. The bill would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites in U.S. and outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market. Opponents say it is censorship, that it will “break the internet”, cost jobs, and will threaten whistleblowing and other free speech.
I don’t like this SOPA plan at all, because the language of SOPA is so broad, the rules so unconnected to the reality of Internet technology and the penalties so disconnected from the alleged crimes. In this form according what I have read this bill could effectively kill lots of e-commerce or even normal Internet use in it’s current form. Trying to put a man-in-the-middle into an end-to-end protocol is a dumb idea. This bill affects us all with the threat to seize foreign domains. It is frankly typical of the arrogance of the US to think we should all be subject their authority.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
The Pirate Bay-censorship does not inspire the operators
The Finnish district court decision on Monday did not excite DNA and TeliaSonera.
The district court decided today that it will be forced to TeliaSonera and DNA, preventing its broadband customers access to the Pirate Bay website. The case continues on Friday, when the right to decide on the practical implementation of the ban.
- If Friday’s follow-up treatment is given only a general provision to block access to the Pirate Bay website, so it is in our view, impossible. I do not expect that the district court to make such a, TeliaSonera’s lawyer Karol Mattila says.
DNA and TeliaSonera as the decisions are a continuation of last year, the Helsinki District Court ordered the telecom operator Elisa to prevent customers’ access to the service. Elisa was prevented by a list of domains distraint authorities. The company has appealed the district court decision to the Court of Appeal.
We believe that prevention efforts are ineffective because blocking can circumvent all voluntary, he says.
Source:
http://www.digitoday.fi/yhteiskunta/2012/06/11/pirate-bay-sensuuri-ei-innosta-operaattoreita/201231275/66?rss=6
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Pirate Bay evades ISP blockade with IPv6, can do it 18 quintillion more times
http://www.extremetech.com/internet/130627-the-pirate-bay-evades-isp-blockade-with-ipv6-can-do-it-18-septillion-more-times
If you thought the RIAA and MPAA were a force to be reckoned with in the US, the last few months have shown that anti-piracy lobbying is alive and kicking in Europe, too. Over the last 9 months, the British, Dutch, Finnish, and Belgian judges and governments have begun forcing ISPs to block The Pirate Bay. In some cases, ISPs were simply required to drop thepiratebay.org from their DNS servers — in the UK, however, ISPs must actively police and block IP addresses.
The problem with both DNS and IP address blocking is that they can be circumvented. The early DNS blocks could be avoided by simply using another DNS server, such as Google’s Public DNS.
Circumventing blackholed IP addresses requires you to use a proxy or VPN (virtual private network), which basically skips around ISP’s network (and thus any blocked IP addresses). In Sweden, where The Pirate Bay has been blocked on and off for a few years, there has been a large uptick in VPN use.
it’s very easy for The Pirate Bay itself to evade an IP block; it simply has to use another IP address.
In theory, The Pirate Bay can simply keep changing IP addressesThe Pirate Bay has now enabled IPv6 on 2002:c247:6b96::1. It is likely that TPB was allocated one IPv6 /64 subnet by its ISP, which equates to 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses.
Presumably, at some point, lobbies, ISPs and governments will grow tired of blocking The Pirate Bay. Every additional IP blackhole must cost tens or hundreds of man hours in court filings, memos, and rubber stamping. I guess the main point isn’t to block power users, though, but to stymy casual downloaders.
Even on that front, though, a simple Google search of “how to access pirate bay” turns up a handful of ways of accessing the blocked site.
As always, it just feels like governments and lobby groups are trying to treat the symptoms of file sharing, rather than the cause.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Feds Tell Megaupload Users to Forget About Their Data
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/06/feds-megaupload-data/
Federal authorities say they may shut down cloud-storage services without having to assist innocent customers in retrieving data lost in the process.
The government is making that argument in the case of Megaupload, the file-sharing service that was shuttered in January following federal criminal copyright-infringement indictments targeting its operators.
The Obama administration is telling an Ohio man seeking the return of his company’s high school sports footage that he should instead be suing Megaupload — even though the government seized Megaupload’s assets in January.
The filing (.pdf) comes as cloud-based storage services are becoming more and more popular — despite there being little clarity about what’s legal and what’s not — and who’s to blame if copyright infringement happens on a service.
“The government also does not oppose access by Kyle Goodwin to the 1,103 servers previously leased by Megaupload. But access is not the issue – if it was, Mr. Goodwin could simply hire a forensic expert to retrieve what he claims is his property and reimburse Carpathia for its associated costs,” the government wrote in a brief filing Friday. “The issue is that the process of identifying, copying, and returning Mr. Goodwin’s data will be inordinately expensive, and Mr. Goodwin wants the government, or Megaupload, or Carpathia, or anyone other than himself, to bear the cost.”
“As more and more consumers move their data to the cloud, and as the government continues its campaign to seize whole websites without regard for third-party property residing on those sites, it’s clear that we need a better solution. We hope the court will help us get there,” said Samuels.
Carpathia said it is spending $9,000 daily to retain the Megaupload data, and is demanding that Judge Liam O’Grady relieve it of that burden. Megaupload, meanwhile, wants the government to free up some of the millions in dollars of seized Megaupload assets to be released to pay Carpathia to retain the data for its defense and possibly to return data to its customers — a proposition which the government rejects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Pro-ACTA Site Says ‘Get the Facts’
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/06/12/2125255/pro-acta-site-says-get-the-facts
“Here’s a new site, called ‘ACTA Facts,’ which invites Europeans to ‘get the facts’ on how wonderful ACTA really is. Judging by its content, this one will be about as successful as Microsoft’s ‘Get the Facts’ campaign a few years ago, which tried to dissuade people from using GNU/Linux”
“site claims that ACTA could ‘boost European”
“Unfortunately, that’s based on numerous flawed assumptions”
ACTA Facts site
http://www.actafacts.com/index.htm
Tomi Engdahl says:
From gigabytes to petadollars: copyright math begets copyright currency
We’ve got billions of dollars worth of songs on our iPods.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/from-gigabytes-to-petadollars-copyright-math-begets-copyright-currency/
American law sets the maximum penalty for pirating a single song at $150,000.
My $249 iPod Classic has room for over 53,000 three-minute songs in immaculate fidelity. Under our anti-piracy laws, that’s about $8 billion worth of music.
It wasn’t always like this. Last Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of the bankruptcy of Napster—the notorious startup that was sued into oblivion with a multi-billion dollar piracy lawsuit. When Napster first launched, the world’s hottest MP3 player could hold just 10 songs. That was a measly $1.5 million worth of pirated goods
As music player capacity has grown, so have the lawsuits. Some were shocked when LimeWire was sued for $7.5 trillion two years ago. That was over ten times the gross revenue that our music industry had racked up since Thomas Edison first filled a 20-ton wax cylinder with an early rendition of “Free Bird” (something that today’s scientists can manage with a mere eighty pounds of wax—such is the march of technology).
But my $8 billion iPad has helped me see how silly it is to use market data to evaluate the cost of piracy. Actual value is determined in a bare-knuckled battle of ideas, waged by professional lobbyists and persons-of-congress. That value is then reified in legal brawls with the likes of LimeWire
Piracy apologists will dismiss the measures of value reflected in trillion-dollar lawsuits, $8 billion iPods, and our $150,000 piracy law (1999′s Copyright Damages Improvement Act). They’ll make flimsy claims about the law being “bought” by “media interests” from “senators” who are so rapacious that’s they’ve quite literally lost their sense of the absurd, resulting in laws that are so disproportionate, grasping, and harebrained that they can barely even be parodied.
For instance, should the feds catch every California high schooler filling an iPod Classic with pirated music, they can announce a 16 PetaDollar ($16PD) bust (the petabyte being the next step up the ladder from the terabyte).
Copyright math is heady stuff. But that’s why it’s best left to experts—like lobbyists and persons-of-Congress.
Tomi Engdahl says:
US Gov’t Wants Megaupload Users To Pay For Their Data
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/06/13/062205/us-govt-wants-megaupload-users-to-pay-for-their-data
“U.S. federal prosecutors are fine with Megaupload users recovering their data — as long as they pay for it. The government’s position was explained in a court filing on Friday”
“The government argues that it only copied part of the Megaupload data and the physical servers were never seized.”
“Goodwin’s options, prosecutors said, are either pay — or sue — Carpathia, or sue Megaupload.”
If Megaupload users want their data, they’re going to have to pay
The U.S. government says it doesn’t have the data and isn’t opposed to users retrieving it
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/427341/megaupload_users_want_their_data_they_re_going_pay/
U.S. federal prosecutors are fine with Megaupload users recovering their data — as long as they pay for it.
The government’s position was explained in a court filing on Friday concerning one of the many interesting side issues that has emerged from the shutdown of Megaupload, formerly one of the most highly trafficked file-sharing sites.
Prosecutors were responding to a motion filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in late March on behalf of Kyle Goodwin, an Ohio-based sports reporter who used Megaupload legitimately for storing videos.
U.S. law allows for third parties who have an interest in forfeited property to make a claim. But the government argues that it only copied part of the Megaupload data and the physical servers were never seized.
Megaupload’s 1,103 servers — which hold upwards of 28 petabytes of data — are still held by Carpathia Hosting, the government said.
“Access is not the issue — if it was, Mr. Goodwin could simply hire a forensic expert to retrieve what he claims is his property and reimburse Carpathia for its associated costs,” the response said. “The issue is that the process of identifying, copying, and returning Mr. Goodwin’s data will be inordinately expensive, and Mr. Goodwin wants the government, or Megaupload, or Carpathia, or anyone other than himself, to bear the cost.”
The issue of what to do with Megaupload’s data has been hanging around for a while. Carpathia contends it costs US$9,000 a day to maintain. Megaupload’s assets are frozen
Meanwhile, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is free on bail, living in his rented home near Auckland and awaiting extradition proceedings to begin in August.
The men — along with two companies — are accused of collecting advertising and subscription fees from users for faster download speeds of material stored on Megaupload. Prosecutors allege the website and its operators collected US$175 million in criminal proceeds, costing copyright holders more than $500 billion in damages to copyright holders.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A Digital Citizen’s Bill of Rights
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/06/13/0256229/a-digital-citizens-bill-of-rights
“Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has published a first-draft Internet Bill of Rights, and it’s open for feedback”
“First, government is flying blind, interfering and regulating without understanding even the basics.”
“Given the value of taking an active approach agains prospective laws such as SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA, I think it’s very important to try to spread awareness, participation, and encourage elected officials to support such things”
This seems to be the twilight zone. An politician taking a stand to help protect freedom. Wow.
It might be interesting to monitor what happens to this in a few months time. Will it be simply ignored, shelved or “noted as valuable input” and then ignored. I’m getting a bit pessimistic about common sense and politicians accepting input from the public lately.
I really hope something good will come out of this, but I won’t hold my breath.
A Digital Citizen’s Bill of Rights
http://keepthewebopen.com/digital-bill-of-rights
The Digital Bill of Rights
1. Freedom – digital citizens have a right to a free, uncensored
2. Openness – digital citizens have a right to an open, unobstructed internet
3. Equality – all digital citizens are created equal on the internet
4. Participation – digital citizens have a right to peaceably participate where and how they choose on the internet
5. Creativity – digital citizens have a right to create, grow and collaborate on the internet, and be held accountable for what they create
6. Sharing – digital citizens have a right to freely share their ideas, lawful discoveries and opinions on the internet
7. Accessibility – digital citizens have a right to access the internet equally, regardless of who they are or where they are
8. Association – digital citizens have a right to freely associate on the internet
9. Privacy – digital citizens have a right to privacy on the internet
10. Property – digital citizens have a right to benefit from what they create, and be secure in their intellectual property on the internet
Tomi Engdahl says:
Retired Judge Joins Fight Against DOJ’s ‘Outrageous’ Seizures in Megaupload Case
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/06/retired-judge-megaupload/
Abraham David Sofaer, a former New York federal judge, recently was presenting a paper at the National Academy of Sciences about deterring cyberattacks when he learned the feds had shut down Megaupload, seizing its domain names, in a criminal copyright infringement case.
“It’s really quite outrageous, frankly,” the 74-year-old President Jimmy Carter appointee said in a recent telephone interview. “I was thinking the government hadn’t learned to be discreet in its conduct in the digital world. This is a perfect example on how they are failing to apply traditional standards in the new context.”
A former State Department legal adviser, Sofaer has teamed up — free of charge — with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in urging a federal court to set up a system to allow Megaupload users to get back their legal content.
The site was so popular it leased more than 1,100 servers hosted by Carpathia in Virginia. The government copied 25 petabytes of the data, and said the rest can be erased. The Department of Justice told the federal judge overseeing the prosecution that the government has no obligation to assist anybody getting back their data, even if it’s non-infringing material.
“That’s a dangerous road,” Sofaer said.
He suggested that the government hasn’t quite caught up to the digital age. He doubts the government would take the same position with a bank it seized.
“Of course they would help customers get back their deposits,” he said. “But think about this new world. You can see very clearly that the government is acting in a manner that is indiscriminate.”
Sofaer, who was also a former New York federal prosecutor, understands the government’s motives.
“They are eager to make cases, and to be as little bothered by the consequences as possible,” he said. “When I was a prosecutor, I probably would have been the same way.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Censorship vs economics in battle for internet control
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/305058,censorship-vs-economics-in-battle-for-internet-control.aspx
Analysis: United Nations agency could spark a drastic change.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google sees ‘alarming’ level of government censorship
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57454920-93/google-sees-alarming-level-of-government-censorship/
Web giant says that in the past six months it received more than 1,000 requests from government officials for the removal of content. It complied with more than half of them.
Google reports it has seen an “alarming” incidence in government requests to censor Internet content in the past six months.
“Unfortunately, what we’ve seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different,” Dorothy Chou, Google’s senior policy analyst
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘Censorship creep’: Pirate Bay block will affect one-third of U.K.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57454683-93/censorship-creep-pirate-bay-block-will-affect-one-third-of-u.k/
Nearly 10 years ago, “Cleanfeed” was designed to protect the British public from child abuse imagery. A decade later, the same system is used to enforce ISP blocks on sites like The Pirate Bay. How did the U.K. fall into “censorship creep”?
Nearly five years ago, the U.K. flipped the Web censorship switch. Most U.K. residents didn’t even notice. Designed by telecommunications giant British Telecom (BT), “Cleanfeed” was used to filter out child abuse imagery, and it did so with great success.
In 2007, Home Office minister Vernon Coaker ordered all U.K. ISPs to subscribe to Cleanfeed to prevent access to scenes of sexual abuse and “criminally obscene” content.
And then things began to change.
The U.K.’s antipiracy legislation, the Digital Economy Act, was brought into law by a tiny minority of parliamentary representatives in 2010. In all fairness, it was only a matter of time.
But a series of delays means the law has yet to swing into full effect. Its “three-strikes” system, designed to inform copyright infringers that repeated acts would lead to Internet disconnections, has been put on ice until 2014.
The United States followed in the U.K.’s footsteps with the Stop Online Piracy Act, also known as SOPA. In a similar fashion to the Digital Economy Act, it would allow copyright holders to seek court injunctions against Web sites that “enable or facilitate copyright infringement.”
The “enabling” of the U.K.’s Digital Economy Act was not quick enough for copyright holders, like the music and film industry. Enough was enough, and they brought a case to court.
In April 2011, the High Court in London ruled BT must block access to file-sharing site Newzbin2 at ISP level — using none other than the Cleanfeed system. It was widely seen as a “test case” building up to forcing bigger file-sharing sites off the British Web.
BT did not appeal the decision, leading to a damaging legal precedent under U.K. law. From the moment of that ruling, any individual or organization could bring a separate case against any other online property.
And so it began.
However, the High Court told ISPs to block certain IP addresses, Web site addresses, and domain names. The Pirate Bay was quick to change its Web site IP address — circumventing the block completely — and many other Web sites offered proxies to allow access to the site.
And here’s the kicker: at no point were U.K. citizens barred from circumventing the blocks to access the “pirate” Web site.
By the time all the blocks are in place, the total tally could reach as many as 20 million users, which amounts to about a third of the U.K. population.
But the effect of the widespread block is far more concentrated.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MPAA / RIAA Ponder Suing Persistent BitTorrent Pirates
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-riaa-ponder-suing-persistent-bittorrent-pirates-120618/
In the coming months U.S. Internet providers will begin to warn and punish copyright infringers. Since the “six strikes” plan was announced, a lot has been said about the temporary disconnections and throttled connections subscribers might be subjected to. But there is an even scarier outlook for persistent BitTorrent pirates, as the MPAA and RIAA have negotiated the right to demand the details of repeat infringers should they decide to take legal action.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Megaupload users who want their data have to pay (or sue), feds say
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/06/18/megaupload-users-who-want-their-data-have-to-pay-or-sue-feds-say/
US federal prosecutors don’t mind if Megaupload users get their files back – as long as they either pay for the forensic expertise to dig it out, or sue Megaupload or Carpathia Hosting, the server farm, to get it.
The government explained its position on Friday, when it responded to a motion filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in late March on behalf of Kyle Goodwin.
On January 19, the FBI shut down file-sharing site Megaupload.com on criminal copyright infringement charges, executing search warrants on the company’s servers and thus locking out all Megaupload customers.
MacBride maintained that Goodwin can sue Megaupload or Carpathia, since they provided the service and should have had an insurance policy to cover an event such as this.
Although US law allows third parties with an interest in forfeited property to make a claim, the government is arguing that it only copied part of the Megaupload data and that the physical servers were never seized.
After all is said and done, it’s easy to blame the victims in the case of Megaupload. After all, what kind of idiot uploads their data to the cloud without keeping an offline backup or the original?
People who don’t know better, that’s who, comments Slashdot poster ccguy. Perhaps they’re ignorant in the field of IT and storage/backup, but who amongst us has all of our assets in places that can’t possibly fail?
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, while the rest of us back up anything we send to the cloud and do some homework on our banks and our insurance policies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Threatens To Sue Huge YouTube MP3 Conversion Site
http://torrentfreak.com/google-threatens-to-sue-huge-youtube-mp3-conversion-site-120619/
According to a letter seen by TorrentFreak, Google are threatening action against one of the web’s largest YouTube conversion sites. The site, which according to Google’s own stats is pulling in 1.3 million visitors every day, extracts MP3 audio from YouTube videos and makes it available for users to download. Google’s lawyers say this must stop, and have given the site seven days to comply.
ouTube is without doubt the biggest free resource of videos and music available online today. It can be enjoyed on the site itself, embedded in any webpage, or accessed via YouTube’s Application Programming Interface.
One of the countless resources to use the YouTube API is YouTube-MP3.org, a huge site which according to Google’s DoubleClick service pulls in 1.3 million visitors every day.
What YouTube-MP3 does is straightforward. At one end a user feeds the site with a YouTube URL and after a couple of minutes the site spits out a standalone MP3 file, perfect for ripping the audio from pop videos.
Needless to say these sites are hugely popular, particularly with the younger generation.
Citing the ToS for YouTube’s API, Cohen insists that offering any kind of service that allows YouTube content to be downloaded (as opposed to simply streamed) is prohibited.
Furthermore, Cohen underlines the fact that to “separate, isolate, or modify the audio or video components of any YouTube audiovisual content made available through the YouTube API” is forbidden, as is externally storing copies of YouTube content.
Continuing to violate these restrictions, Cohen warns, may result in “legal consequences” for YouTube-mp3.
Google has just blocked all of YouTube-MP3′s servers from accessing YouTube so currently the site has no MP3 download service to offer or indeed withdraw.
Whatever the outcome in the case of YouTube-MP3, Google has a big task ahead if it is to end all similar services online. A simple search for “YouTube MP3″ with its own engine produces dozens of alternatives.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Internet heroes and villains are named
UK ISPA announces its annual shortlist
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2185418/internet-heroes-villains-named
THE UK Internet Service Provider’s Association (ISPA) has published its 2012 list of internet heroes and villains.
The list reflects what has happened on or around the internet is the last year. Villains then, include people behind ACTA and SOPA, and heroes include Ofcom for its “this won’t work” stance on web site blocking.
Unsurprisingly, the villains represent the other side of the open internet debate, and there we get to meet Karel De Gucht, who pushed through the execrable ACTA trade agreement, US Representative Lamar Smith, who gave the world SOPA, Goldeneye International, whose business is speculative invoicing, and the International Telecommunications Union, for its “internet governance land-grab”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
European Parliament prepares for crucial ACTA vote
2.8 million people say no to treaty
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/21/european_parliament_acta/
On Thursday the European Parliament’s International Trade Committee will vote on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and give its recommendations on whether or not to recommend the controversial treaty.
So far over 2.8 million people have signed a petition organized by AVAAZ against the ACTA treaty and several countries, most recently the Netherlands, have rejected the treaty.
While the European Commission, made up of appointed rather than elected representatives, still supports ACTA, members have given strong indications that the treaty is dead in the water.
La Quadrature du Net is calling for a quick vote to settle the issue once and for all.
“So far all committees have called for the rejection of ACTA,” it said. “We urge the INTA members to do the same, and vote against any amendment calling for the adoption of ACTA or for postponing the final vote of the Parliament. Delaying the vote is a deceptive stratagem that the EU Commission and industry lobbies have been pushing for weeks in order to save face.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Denmark reportedly abandoning ‘three strikes’ piracy law in favor of education and site blocking
http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/21/3104234/denmark-anti-piracy-package-site-blocking-education
Denmark is reportedly set to unveil a new anti-piracy strategy that will focus on education and innovation instead of punishment. According to TorrentFreak, the Ministry of Culture will soon announce a “Pirate Package” meant to entice users into paying for music or other content.
Ministry will work with rightsholders, telecoms, and others to spur creation of legal alternatives to piracy, educate users on what constitutes copyright infringement, and reach out to users who “upload and use illegal material.”
More controversially, however, TorrentFreak reports that Denmark could expand the ISP-level blocking of sites like Grooveshark and The Pirate Bay.
require a court to decide whether one ISP should block a site and then communicate that decision to other companies, who would also cut off access.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Call for Ray Bradbury to be honoured with internet error message
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/22/ray-bradbury-internet-error-message-451
Ray Bradbury’s fiction looks set to enter the structure of the internet, after a software developer has proposed a new HTTP status code inspired by Fahrenheit 451.
Tim Bray, a fan of Bradbury’s writing, is recommending to the Internet Engineering Task Force, which governs such choices, that when access to a website is denied for legal reasons the user is given the status code 451.
There are already a host of HTTP status codes, from the common 404 Not Found to 504 Gateway Timeout. The 451 idea follows a blogpost from Terence Eden, who found that his ISP had been ordered to censor the Pirate Bay when he was given an HTTP 403 Forbidden message, meaning that “the server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfil it”. In fact, Eden writes on his blog, it was not Pirate Bay that was preventing access but the government
The Internet Engineering Task Force is likely to look at his proposal when it next meets in late July, Bray said. “This is a smart and conservative group and it’s possible that someone will point out a fatal flaw in the idea, or that while such a status code is sensible, the number ‘451′ is inappropriate for technical reasons. I’d be mildly surprised, but not too terribly; designing the internet is hard,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Canadian DOJ Warned About Unconstitutionality of Copyright Digital Lock Rules
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/06/25/1828233/canadian-doj-warned-about-unconstitutionality-of-copyright-digital-lock-rules
“The Canadian House of Commons may have passed the Canadian DMCA, but the constitutional concerns with the copyright bill and its digital lock rules will likely linger for years”
Tomi Engdahl says:
EU Commissioner Reveals He Will Ignore Any Rejection of ACTA
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/06/26/2116226/eu-commissioner-reveals-he-will-ignore-any-rejection-of-acta
Dupple tips a story at Techdirt about comments from EU commissioner Karel De Gucht, who made some discouraging remarks to the EU International Trade committee about the opposition to ACTA: “If you decide for a negative vote before the European Court rules, let me tell you that the Commission will nonetheless continue to pursue the current procedure before the Court, as we are entitled to do.’
Tomi Engdahl says:
Anonymous turns ire on Japan after anti-piracy law passes
Key sites get a good DDoS-ing
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/27/anonymous_japan_ddos/
It was only a matter of time – hacktivist group Anonymous has taken aim at the web sites of political parties and government departments in Japan in retaliation for a tough new anti-piracy bill passed last week.
Under the terms of the revised Copyright Law, illegal file sharing could land the perpetrator with a maximum of two years in prison and/or a fine of up to ¥2 million (£15,982).
We at Anonymous believe strongly that this will result in scores of unnecessary prison sentences to numerous innocent citizens while doing little to solve the underlying problem of legitimate copyright infringement.’
Tomi Engdahl says:
Australia goes cold on ACTA
This dead cat won’t even bounce properly
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/27/oz_goes_cold_on_acta/
Another bit of flesh dropped off the decaying zombie that is ACTA, with the Australian parliamentary Treaties Committee recommending that ratification be deferred – partly because of its near-collapse in Europe.
The committee states that ACTA should not be ratified until a range of conditions, including a cost-benefit analysis, are met.
He also notes the unfavourable reception that ACTA has received internationally. The ratification process in the EU, for example, has stalled. “The international reaction to ACTA, which, without exception, comes from countries which the Committee considers would have the same interests as Australia, must also be taken into consideration,” Thomson said.
Tomi says:
Don’t Forget: “Six Strikes” Starts This Weekend
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/06/30/035226/dont-forget-six-strikes-starts-this-weekend
“If you don’t recall, then Broadband/DSL Reports is here to remind us that ISPs around the U.S. will begin adhering to the RIAA/MPAA-fueled ‘Six Strikes’ agreement on July 1st. Or is it July 12th? Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Cablevision are all counted among the participants.”
Tomi says:
ACTA lives on as CETA
EU and Canada use backdoor tactics
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2190835/acta-lives-on-as-ceta
WE THOUGHT IT WAS DEAD, but ACTA was only wounded, and now it is sneaking back into the European Union.
Cunning, or should that be dastardly, bodies in Europe and Canada have taken the worst elements of the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement and snuck them into another trade treaty, this time called CETA.
CETA has been exposed in leaked documents, which show the European Union engaged in talks about resurrecting ACTA in a European and Canadian foot on consumers’ necks treaty.
“The EU plans to use the Canada – EU Trade Agreement (CETA), which is nearing its final stages of negotiation, as a backdoor mechanism to implement the ACTA provisions,”
“According to the leaked document, dated February 2012, Canada and the EU have already agreed to incorporate many of the ACTA enforcement provisions into CETA”
“Recently leaked documents show that the EU plans to use CETA, an agreement nearing its final stages of negotiation, as a backdoor mechanism to implement the ACTA provisions. Something we have feared likely.”
“There are legitimate concerns about the enforcement, damages and border control obligations in CETA.”
Tomi says:
Censoring The Pirate Bay is Futile, ISPs Reveal
http://torrentfreak.com/censoring-the-pirate-bay-is-futile-isps-reveal-120711/
All around the world the copyright lobby is pushing for increased censorship of ‘pirate’ websites, The Pirate Bay in particular. Thus far this has resulted in court-ordered blockades in several countries including the UK, the Netherlands and Belgium. However, in recent months evidence has started to stack up showing that these blocking efforts are futile. BitTorrent traffic is not decreasing and the blockades may actually be counterproductive.
Last week, Dutch Internet provider XS4All revealed that after they started to enforce the Pirate Bay blockade, BitTorrent traffic went up instead of down.
Today, two other major ISPs in the Netherlands – KPN and UPC – have made statements suggesting that censoring The Pirate Bay does little to stop BitTorrent traffic.
KPN saw no traffic decrease at all after the blockade was implemented. UPC initially observed a small decline in download traffic, but this went back to normal shortly after.
earlier findings by researchers from the University of Amsterdam, which showed that the blockade has had no impact on the number of BitTorrent pirates.
The results are not really unexpected, as there are countless other ways to download the torrents available on The Pirate Bay.
Tomi says:
Piracy witch hunt downs legit e-book lending Web site
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57489696-93/piracy-witch-hunt-downs-legit-e-book-lending-web-site/
Several authors on Twitter mistook an e-book lending Web site for a piracy hub, a mistake that eventually took the site offline. As the dust settles, a disturbing picture of file-sharing hysteria emerges.
On August 1, a vitriolic, hysterical mob of authors mistook e-book lending Web site Lendink for a piracy clearinghouse, rallying a terribly mistaken call to action.
The site remains offline today as details emerge revealing just how wrong these authors were — and how unrepentant some of them still are.
Lendink was a hobby site put together by disabled army vet Dale Porter, who created a person-to-person e-mail request system where e-book fans could find out about lend-enabled books on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and contact each other to arrange loans on titles they wanted to read.
An ugly, clumsy mob
It started when one person took a cursory look at Lendink and thought the site was giving books away for free — and told as many authors as possible that it was a piracy site, and everyone’s work was listed on it.
What’s worse is that when blogs such as Techdirt began to reveal the truth, the most vocal witch hunt proponents admitted no mistake and made no apologies.
So far, one of the angry authors has admitted the mistake and apologized.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Private justice: How Hollywood money put a Brit behind bars
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/private-justice-how-hollywood-money-put-a-brit-behind-bars/
Industry-funded prosecution leads to 4-year sentence for SurfTheChannel owner.
Anton Vickerman, 38-year old owner of the once popular link site surfthechannel.com (STC), was sentenced to four years in prison on Tuesday by a British judge. But the prosecutors sitting across the courtroom from him didn’t work for the Crown—they were lawyers for the movie studio trade group Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).
FACT, not public officials in the UK, was the driving force behind Vickerman’s prosecution. Indeed, FACT effectively took on the role of a private law enforcement agency.
This is a new development for anti-piracy efforts. Organizations like the MPAA, RIAA, IFPA, and FACT have long lobbied law enforcement officials to prosecute “rogue sites” and have provided them with information and logistical support to do so. But public prosecutors generally have the final say on who will be indicted. In the Vickerman case, the public prosecutors concluded that there wasn’t enough evidence to merit prosecution. FACT disagreed and invoked what one lawyer told us is an “archaic right” for a private organization to bring criminal prosecutions against other private parties.
Vickerman posted a lengthy testimonial to his site after he was convicted. In it, he describes FACT as a lawless conspiracy to shut down his site for the benefit of competing video sites, and he portrays Judge Evans as an “imbecile” who didn’t understand the legal issues in the case.
Surfthechannel.com grew rapidly—so rapidly that it soon came to the attention of Hollywood. The site hosted no videos, but its meticulously organized collection of links made it popular with those seeking infringing content. And plenty of people were interested. At the site’s peak in mid-2009, STC attracted hundreds of thousands of users per day, earning Vickerman up to £50,000 ($78,500) per month in advertising revenue.
FACT wanted to shutter the site, but first it had to find out who was running the thing. Vickerman had kept a low profile, registering the domain through an anonymizing service and purchasing server space offshore. Undeterred, FACT hired an investigator named Pascal Hetzscholdt to pose as a potential investor who lured Vickerman to a London hotel on July 10, 2008.
Vickerman told both police and FACT investigators that the STC site was, in his view, legal; it acted “as a search engine” and was exempt from liability, he said.
In the United States, public prosecutors generally have the power to decide when criminal prosecution is appropriate.
United Kingdom law differs. There, private parties can initiate criminal prosecutions if they’re willing to cover the costs out of their own pockets. FACT was, and so it bypassed CPS and brought criminal charges against Vickerman directly.
Litigation dragged on for years
By the time the STC case reached trial in 2012, another judge had ruled that TV-Links had not infringed copyright.
But a jury found Vickerman guilty of “conspiracy to defraud” (rather than of facilitating copyright infringement) and the judge pronounced sentence.
Of course, the courts, not FACT, determine what is and isn’t unlawful—and the courts had ultimately found that TV-Links had not violated the law.
Cook describes the right of private parties to initiate criminal prosecutions as “archaic.”
He argues that the ability of private companies to bring criminal charges opens the door to abuses.
But Cook worries that the “enormous financial resources and clout” of organizations like FACT, and the lack of public oversight of their activities, could deprive defendants of a fair trial.
“There is no doubt that copyright holders deserve the full protection of the law,” he told me. “But I still think that the manner in which they conduct these prosecutions is offensive.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Analytics Could Be Banned In Norway [Updated]
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/20/google-analytics-could-be-banned-in-norway/
The Norwegian Data Protection Bureau has declared that Google Analytics is not in accordance with the law. They justify themselves by referring to a 2008 European Directive that demonstrates once again the ignorance of Eurocrats — even though Norway is not a member state of the European Union.
From time to time, European governments cite that Directive against a particular service or hypocritically ignore it to implement anti-piracy laws such as the HADOPI law in France.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UK kids’ charity lobbies hard for ‘opt-in’ web smut access
Parenting fail or p0rn0 too easily available? Esther Rantzen says it’s the latter
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/27/childline_calls_on_opt_in/
The founder of British charity ChildLine is calling on the government to take a hardline approach against what some consider to be hardcore pornography online – by enforcing an opt-in system for adults to protect kids from being traumatised by the images.
Prime Minister David Cameron has previously indicated his support for such an opt-in system.
But many major telcos are opposed to such measures, arguing such a move is simply not workable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
With A Budget Almost Cut In Half And 40 Percent Staff Cuts Can The RIAA Survive?
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/23/bad-news-for-the-riaa-budget-almost-cut-in-half-40-percent-staff-cuts-and-still-irrelevant/
RIAA’s budget comes from music labels and distributors. In theory it represents the interests of the music industry. Therefore, it depends on their willingness to pay them to represent music in all its forms. That’s not going so well.
Instead of spending tens of millions of dollars in legal fees, the RIAA is supporting the copyright alert system and its six strikes, a policy inspired by the unpopular and ineffective French anti-piracy law called Hadopi.
In other words, the RIAA is still wasting a lot of money that could have been better used to foster novel Internet services or music experiences and to create new sources of revenues for the artists.
With that new-found austerity, the RIAA cut its staff by nearly 40% from 117 to 72 employees. A budget item stays stable over the years, however. Their lobbying activity is still active to the tune of $2.3 million a year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Comcast Protests “Shake Down” of Alleged BitTorrent Pirates
http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-protests-shake-down-of-alleged-bittorrent-pirates-120612/
Comcast has run out of patience with the avalanche of BitTorrent lawsuits in the United States. The ISP is now refusing to comply with court-ordered subpoenas, arguing that they are intended to “shake down” subscribers by coercing them to pay settlements. Copyright holders have responded furiously to Comcast’s new stance, claiming that the ISP is denying copyright holders the opportunity to protect their works.
In recent years more than a quarter million alleged BitTorrent users have been sued in federal courts. Most of the lawsuits are initiated by adult entertainment companies, but mainstream movie studios and book publisher John Wiley and Sons have also joined in.
Initially Comcast complied with these subpoenas, but an ongoing battle in the Illinois District Court shows that the company changed its tune recently.
Instead of handing over subscriber info, Comcast asked the court to quash the subpoenas.
The real kicker, however, comes with the third argument. Here, Comcast accuses the copyright holders of a copyright shakedown, exploiting the court to coerce defendants into paying settlements.
“Plaintiffs should not be allowed to profit from unfair litigation tactics whereby they use the offices of the Court as an inexpensive means to gain Doe defendants’ personal information and coerce ‘settlements’ from them,” Comcast’s lawyers write.
“Even after courts regularly order Comcast to comply with the subpoenas, Comcast fights tooth and nail to resist complying.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google receives 1.5m takedown requests a week
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9502877/Google-receives-1.5m-takedown-requests-a-week.html
The number of requests by rights holders to have content removed from Google has doubled in the last month, according to the search engine’s transparency report.
Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), copyright holders have the right to demand that websites take down links which point to content infringing their rights.
One of the main recipients of those rapidly increasing requests is Google.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Malaysian Cyber Cafe Owners Liable For Patron Behavior
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/08/29/1931237/malaysian-cyber-cafe-owners-liable-for-patron-behavio
“An internet café manager is accountable if one of his or her customers sends illegal content online through the store’s WiFi. A mobile phone user is the perpetrator if defamatory content is traced back to his or her electronic device.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The U.S. Department of Justice has dropped its case against two Spanish websites that stream sports events nearly 17 months after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized the sites and shut them down for alleged copyright violations.
DOJ drops charges against websites seized for 17 months
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/435018/doj_drops_charges_against_websites_seized_17_months/
The judge ordered two sports-streaming websites to be returned to their own
The U.S. Department of Justice has dropped its case against two Spanish websites that stream sports events nearly 17 months after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized the sites and shut them down for alleged copyright violations.
The Rojadirecta seizures, along with the yearlong seizure of music site Dajaz1.com, show the problems with ICE’s copyright seizure methods, said Sherwin Siy, vice president of legal affairs for digital rights group Public Knowledge.
“It is far too easy for the government to seize domain names and hold them for an extended period even when it is unable to make a sustainable case of infringement,” Siy said in an email. “These sorts of abuses are likely to continue until there are adequate safeguards to assure accountability.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
How copyright enforcement robots killed the Hugo Awards
http://io9.com/5940036/how-copyright-enforcement-robots-killed-the-hugo-awards
Last night, robots shut down the live broadcast of one of science fiction’s most prestigious award ceremonies. No, you’re not reading a science fiction story.
Ustream just shut down the #Hugos live stream because they showed clips of the TV nominees. Automated copyright patrols ruin more things.
This was, of course, absurd. First of all, the clips had been provided by the studios to be shown during the award ceremony. The Hugo Awards had explicit permission to broadcast them. But even if they hadn’t, it is absolutely fair use to broadcast clips of copyrighted material during an award ceremony. Unfortunately, the digital restriction management (DRM) robots on Ustream had not been programmed with these basic contours of copyright law.
The point is, our ability to broadcast was entirely dependent on poorly-programmed bots. And once those bots had made their incorrect decision, there was absolutely nothing we could do to restart the signal, as it were. In case anyone still believes that copyright rules can’t stop free speech or snuff out a community, the automated censorship of the Hugo Awards is a case in point.
Robots killed our legitimate broadcast. Welcome to the present.
Hunstable writes on the Ustream blog:
Very unfortunately at 7:43 p.m. Pacific time, the channel was automatically banned in the middle of an acceptance speech by author Neil Gaiman due to “copyright infringement.” This occurred because our 3rd party automated infringement system, Vobile, detected content in the stream that it deemed to be copyrighted. Vobile is a system that rights holders upload their content for review on many video sites around the web. The video clips shown prior to Neil’s speech automatically triggered the 3rd party system at the behest of the copyright holder.
COMMENT:
Ustream is acting as judge, jury, and executioner — and that’s exactly what the big labels (the copyright managers — Sony, Time Warner, etc.) want. The owners know that providers will err on the side that risks less money.
Tomi Engdahl says:
You’ll be on a list 3 hrs after you start downloading from pirates – study
Bad news for seeders ‘n’ feeders…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/05/p2p_copyright_enforcement_study/
File sharers who download torrents from services such as The Pirate Bay can expect to find their IP address logged by copyright enforcers within three hours, according to a new study by computer scientists.
Researchers at the UK’s University of Birmingham reached the finding at the end of a two-year study into how organisations are monitoring illegal file sharers.
They conclude that large scale monitoring of the most popular illegal downloads from The Pirate Bay has been taking place over the last three years.
“Average time before monitors connect: 40% of the monitors that communicated with our clients made their initial connection within 3 hours of the client joining the swarm; the slowest monitor took 33 hours to make its first connection.”
“We found six very large scale monitors, however all of them where using third-party hosting companies. Therefore we can’t be sure who they really were”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Automatic copyright sensor hits again:
YouTube Flags Democrats’ Convention Video on Copyright Grounds
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/youtube-flags-democrats-convention-video-on-copyright-grounds/
YouTube, the official streaming partner of the Democratic National Convention, put a copyright blocking message on the livestream video of the event shortly after it ended
A YouTube spokesman downplayed the blockage: “After tonight’s live stream ended, YouTube briefly showed an incorrect error message,” he said via e-mail. ” Neither the live stream nor any of the channel’s videos were affected.”
It’s not clear what he meant by none of the channel’s videos were affected as the video was unplayable.
In early August, an official NASA recording of the Mars landing was blocked hours after the successful landing, due to a rogue DMCA complaint by a news network.
Under the DMCA, sites have to respond promptly to written DMCA requests, but as services like uStream and Google court large entertainment companies as advertisers and content partners, they’ve created systems to make blocking automatic or to allow partners to put ads on videos they claim are infringing.
DNC livestream on YouTube blocked on copyright grounds
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57506193-93/dnc-livestream-on-youtube-blocked-on-copyright-grounds/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title
The event’s official stream was yanked due to copyright infringement concerns, according to a message posted on YouTube
YouTube spokesperson says block message appeared in error, but video has since been marked as private.
The most likely explanation is that the video was flagged by YouTube’s pre-emptive content filters, which automatically blocks content that appears to match copyrighted video content uploaded by media giants. That was the driving force that knocked video of the Curiosity rover’s dramatic landing on Mars from the video site last month, as well as a livestream of the Hugo science awards earlier this week that included short clips of copyrighted material.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Universal Says It Can’t Be Sued for Bogus Megaupload Video Takedown
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/universal-megaupload-video/
But the record label said there’s nothing Megaupload can do about Universal Music taking down the video, even if Universal doesn’t own the rights to it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Honeytrap reveals mass monitoring of downloaders
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/09/honeytrap-catches-copyright-co.html
Anyone who has downloaded pirated music, video or ebooks using a BitTorrent client has probably had their IP address logged by copyright-enforcement authorities within 3 hours of doing so. So say computer scientists who placed a fake pirate server online – and very quickly found monitoring systems checking out who was taking what from the servers.
Birmingham’s fake server acted like a part of a file-sharing swarm and the connections made to it quickly revealed the presence of file-sharing monitors run by “copyright enforcement organisations, security companies and even government research labs”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Japan ratifies ACTA agreement
Controversial trade agreement is still kicking
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2203330/japan-ratifies-acta-agreement
THE ODIOUS Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been approved by the Japanese government in a vote.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Algorithmic Copyright Cops: Streaming Video’s Robotic Overlords
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/06/2225249/the-algorithmic-copyright-cops-streaming-videos-robotic-overlords
“Geeta Dayal of Wired’s Threat Level blog posts an interesting report about bot-mediated automatic takedowns of streaming video. He mentions the interruption of Michelle Obama’s speech at the DNC, and the blocking of NASA’s coverage of Mars rover Curiosity’s landing by a Scripps News Service bot, but the story really drills down on the abrupt disappearance of the Hugo Award’s live stream of Neil Gaiman’s acceptance speech for his Doctor Who script.”
The Algorithmic Copyright Cops: Streaming Video’s Robotic Overlords
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/streaming-videos-robotic-overlords-algorithmic-copyright-cops/all/
As live streaming video surges in popularity, so are copyright “bots” — automated systems that match content against a database of reference files of copyrighted material. These systems can block streaming video in real time, while it is still being broadcast, leading to potentially worrying implications for freedom of speech.
Those incidents foretell an odd future for streaming video, as bandwidth and recording tools get cheaper, and the demand for instant video grows.
Copyright bots are being wired into that infrastructure, programmed as stern and unyielding censors with one hand ever poised at the off switch. What happens if the bot detects snippets of a copyrighted song or movie clip in the background? Say a ringtone from a phone not shut off at a PTA meeting? Or a short YouTube clip shown by a convention speaker to illustrate a funny point? Will the future of livestreaming be so fragile as to be unusable?
A swarm of tech companies are rushing in to provide technical solutions to enforce copyright in online sharing communities and video-streaming sites.
“The companies that are selling these automated takedown systems are really going above and beyond the requirements set for them in the DMCA, and as a result are favoring the interests of a handful of legacy media operators over the free-speech interest of the public,” says Parker Higgins, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The notice-and-takedown regime created by the DMCA allows copyright holders to send a written notice to an online hosting service when they find their copyright being violated. The online service can then escape legal liability by taking down the content fairly promptly, and the original poster has the opportunity to dispute the notice and have the content reinstated after two weeks.
But that regime breaks down for livestreaming. For one, if a valid copyright dispute notice is filed by a human, it’s unlikely that a livestream site would take it down before the event ends, nor, under the law, is it actually required to. On the flipside, if a stream is taken down, the user who posted it has no immediate recourse, and the viewership disappears.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cloud Firm MediaFire Flags Malware Samples For DMCA Violation, Bans Researcher
http://yro.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&type=story&sid=12/09/07/1738222
“A malicious software researcher finds herself in company with First Lady Michelle Obama and science fiction author Neil Gaiman: booted from the Web by hard-headed copyright protection algorithms, according to the Naked Security blog. Mila Parkour, a researcher who operates the Contagio malware blog, said on Thursday that she was kicked off the cloud based hosting service Mediafire, after three files she hosted there were flagged for copyright violations and ordered removed under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The files included two compressed and encrypted malicious PDF files linked to Contagio blog posts from 2010.”
Malware authors are content creators too?
Don’t they deserve the recognition and profits for their hard work?
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Six strikes” Internet warning system will come to US this year
We speak with the head of the new antipiracy effort.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/six-strikes-internet-warning-system-really-truly-coming-to-us-this-year/
Even as France looks set to scrap its three-strikes antipiracy scheme known as HADOPI, US Internet providers are inching forward with their milder “six strikes” program. But the head of that effort says the system is about education, and it is coming by the end of the year.
The Copyright Alert System, as it’s formally known, was originally slated to deploy by the end of December 2011, a date that was then pushed back to July 2012. Now the CCI’s head, Jill Lesser, tells Ars the group is on track to launch by the end of the year. However, Lesser provided scant new details about the program.
“We are still very much intending to launch this year, but in no way was missing a July deadline a missed deadline,” she said in a recent interview. “This isn’t the American version of the French system, and it isn’t a baseball game.”
The ISPs involved are keeping quiet as well.
Lesser was reluctant to provide additional details beyond the Memorandum of Understanding published in July 2011. She emphasized that this MoU refers to the program as a “learning experience” for Internet users.
“It is not a six strikes program,” she said. “This is an educational program; there are a series of educational alerts that will be sent out to subscribers.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dutch Court: hyperlinks on website can constitute copyright infringement
http://www.futureofcopyright.com/home/blog-post/2012/09/13/dutch-court-hyperlinks-on-website-can-constitute-copyright-infringement.html
Yesterday, the Court of Amsterdam decided that publishing hyperlinks to copyrighted content is, under certain circumstances, a copyright infringement. It’s a pioneering decision, as it is the first time that a Dutch court rules in proceedings on the merits that hyperlinks can constitute a breach of copyright and formulates clear criteria in order to test if the circumstances of a case lead to an actual infringement.
Tomi Engdahl says:
First Hadopi conviction in France misfires
Innocent man was found guilty
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2205569/first-hadopi-conviction-in-france-misfires
THE FIRST PERSON to be fined under the French anti-filesharing Hadopi law was actually innocent of downloading anything.
Rather, it was his wife who did the downloading. The problem is, she did it using his internet connection and under Hadopi that makes him responsible.
While the French rules could have forced his ISP to shut off his internet connection, this never happened.
Tomi Engdahl says:
French copyright crackdown claims first victim
http://www.zdnet.com/french-copyright-crackdown-claims-first-victim-7000004265/
Summary: The first person fined under the Sarkozy-era Hadopi law is a 40-year-old man whose soon-to-be-ex-wife downloaded Rihanna songs over his internet connection.
The man was the first to get past the third-warning point, but the court did not cut off his internet connection — the ultimate Hadopi sanction.
It took a very long time to get to this point, seeing as the Hadopi law passed three years ago, allowing then-PM Nicolas Sarkozy’s government to establish the letter-writing bureau of the same name.
Rights-holders claimed at the start of this year that the Hadopi three-strikes policy was working,
In the UK, the Digital Economy Act 2010 would establish a similar scheme to Hadopi. However, the letter-writing phase has not started yet, and no sanctions will be levied on anyone until 2015, around the time of the next general election.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Governments block YouTube over that video
Google has bowed to censorship demands in some countries
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/19/youtube_backlash_muslim_world/
Google’s YouTube service is under fire across the Muslim world after several governments blocked the site outright after the web giant refused to remove or restrict access to a video uploaded by a US filmmaker ridiculing the Prophet Muhammed.
The 13 minute video, a trailer for an amateurish film called the Innocence of Muslims, quickly gained notoriety last week after rioting broke out in Egypt and Libya to protest its content.
“This video – which is widely available on the web – is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube,”
The firm is now facing assault from all sides, with free speech advocates claiming it has bowed too quickly to censorship requests from some governments, while government officials in nations that have blocked the site clearly taking a dim view of its failure to delete the film.
Tomi Engdahl says:
FAIL – Prominent Pirate Party Politician Goes After Book Pirates
http://torrentfreak.com/fail-prominent-pirate-party-politician-polices-book-pirates-120918/
Julia Schramm, a prominent board member of the German Pirate Party, had success in scoring a lucrative book deal and finally had her work published this week. Nothing out of the ordinary there, if it wasn’t for the fact that Schramm and her publisher are now clamping down on book pirates. Dropbox removed a copy of Schramm’s book after it received a DMCA take-down request today and another copy hosted on the Pirate Party’s own site also vanished into thin air.
In common with many other Pirates the 26-year old detests the “content mafia” and she previously described the term “intellectual property” as “disgusting“.
At least… she used to.
Yesterday, when Schramm’s book “Click Me: Confessions of an Internet exhibitionist” was released both on paper and as an e-book, the tide started to turn.
In addition to earning a 100,000 euro advance, this deal with the “content mafia” required her to sign away her copyrights.
This means that Schramm, nor any other person, is able to share a copy of the book. This is quite obviously an awkward position for a board member of the German Pirate Party.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Clean IT – Leak shows plans for large-scale, undemocratic surveillance of all communications
http://www.edri.org/cleanIT
The European Commission-funded CleanIT project claims that it wants to fight terrorism through voluntary self-regulatory measures that defends the rule of law.
The proposals urge Internet companies to ban unwelcome activity through their terms of service, but advise that these “should not be very detailed”. This already widespread approach
The leaked paper also contradicts the assertion in the letter that the project “does not aim to restrict behaviour that is not forbidden by law” – the whole point of prohibiting content in terms of service that is theoretically prohibited by law, is to permit extra-judicial vigilantism by private companies, otherwise the democratically justified law would be enough. Worse, the only way for a company to be sure of banning everything that is banned by law, is to use terms that are more broad, less well defined and less predictable than real law.
CleanIT wants binding engagements from internet companies to carry out surveillance, to block and to filter (albeit only at “end user” – meaning local network – level). It wants a network of trusted online informants and, contrary to everything that they have ever said, they also want new, stricter legislation from Member States.
Tomi Engdahl says:
After EDRI publishing a “not for publication” document, Clean IT was on social media compared with ACTA and accused of negociating behind closed doors. See for more clarification our FAQ page and the online discussion between projectmanager But Klaasen and technology writer Glyn Moody.
Clean IT – Leak shows plans for large-scale, undemocratic surveillance of all communications
http://www.edri.org/cleanIT