The age-old battle of copyright and artist freedom keeps clanging away in the distance, and are we any better off than we were when DAT machines were castrated in the 80's? I read a report this morning about a UK band called "Show of Hands" who claims they are dependent upon so-called pirates who download their music and share it with friends. This isn't much different than Trent Reznor making his music freely available online (and my wife reports the show here in town didn't look any smaller than the ones in the 90's -- possibly even bigger since Reznor has a new legion of fans younger than us). But the music industry sticks by the mantra "a download is a lost sale, and that is theft." Or, as TorrentFreak puts it, "there is no such animal as 'piracy as promotion.'"
Oh really? This sad, antiquated logic continues to do one thing and one thing only: bolster sales of the top-paid performers while creating a chilling effect on artists who would love innovative promotion but fear free samples will incur the wrath of the mighty RIAA, or worse. It's one thing to send the FBI after some poor schlub who leaks some Guns N' Roses tracks, or sue the bejeebes out of hundreds of college kids, but it's quite another to threaten fair trade when artists (who own their own content, thank you) decide to market in ways they see fit.
The only ray of sunshine could be recent rulings regarding Creative Commons which might allow savvy artists to provide music in the manner they see fit, without the RIAA calling fans of the artists a bunch of pirates. Arrr, matey. At the end of the day there has to be some middle ground, but it's a pity the RIAA and other enforcement agencies see the world in black and white and tend to pull their concepts of ownership from the days when TV's were also monochromatic.
There's good news today for user generated video sites like YouTube, DailyMotion, and MetaCafe. A federal court in California has ruled that Veoh did not violate the copyright of a pornography company by automatically transcoding video uploaded by a user.
Let's back up a second here. If you upload copyrighted material to an online video site to share with others without the copyright holder's permission, you may be breaking the law. But the question of whether the video site itself is violating the law is a bit murkier. The IO Group, which owned the video in question filed a suit agains Veoh in 2006 claiming that the video service could not hide behind safe harbor laws by saying that the user, not the video site was responsible because Veoh took the action of transcoding the video into Flash for online viewing.
Of course, the process of transcoding a video is pretty much automatic, and the judge in this case seemed to understand that Veoh's action in transcoding the video were about as deliberate breathing. The ruling basically states that as long as a video site can demonstrate that it warns users that they should not upload copyrighted video without permission, removes copyrighted videos promptly when faced with a DMCA takedown notice, and at least makes some effort at sniffing out illegally uploaded videos, the company is lawsuit-proof. Or at least lawsuit-resistant up to a few meters.
Over the past few years, we've seen a number of artists, software developers and others release their work under non-traditional copyright licenses. Historically, copyright laws have been used to prevent others from redistributing your work. But Creative Commons and the GNU General Public License allow content makers to distribute their work for free -- while insisting upon certain conditions.
For example, there are Creative Commons licenses that would let you write a poem and allow anyone to publish that poem on their web site as long as they provide proper attribution. Or you can use the GNU GPL to release a piece of software that others can distribute for free, or even charge a fee for -- as long as they continue to make the source code available for free.
Up until now, the validity of these licenses hasn't really been put to the test. But on Wednesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned a San Francisco court ruling dealing with just these issues. Basically, a software developer who published model train software was using code that had been released for free. But he did not give credit to the developers of the original software, despite the fact that the license required him to do so.
When the guy who developed the open original application filed suit, the San Fransisco court ruled that the terms of the license were too broad to be enforceable. But this week's ruling overturns that decision which means that software developers, musicians, artists, and others who release their work under an "open source" license have a reasonable expectation that the terms of the license will be enforceable -- at least until some schmuck comes along and takes the case to the Supreme Court.
Google is known for its quick reactions to copyright claims, taking down videos from YouTube and Google video at the request of original copyright holders -- especially big players like TV networks. Recently, Paulo Ordoveza found one of his videos was the victim of one of these claims, and it was taken down from Google Video. The strange thing is that he had recorded his piece -- a time-lapse of some clouds -- back in 2006, way before it was used by Arianna Huffington's 23/6 Media as part of the infamous "Anonymous Message to Scientology" video.
Paulo says the video is coming back up, but this incident still raises a bigger issue about the effectiveness of Google's automated copyright enforcement scheme, which uses "a program that analyzes similarities in audio or video between user videos and a library of reference content provided to us by copyright owners. When a video matches a reference file, that video is automatically disabled." Is a system like this adequate when it comes to independent authors who want to make a video freely available for use, avoiding any kind of aggressive copyright enforcement?
For the record, Paulo never had a problem with 23/6's use of the video, and he's a fan of Anonymous. 23/6 also never asked that the original video come down. You can compare the two videos for yourself: here's the original, and here's the Anonymous Message.
CORRECTION: Paulo writes in to correct a few things here. The original Anonymous Message was not done by 23/6, who actually made a later parody of that video. Also, the correct link for the clouds from 2006 is here. Thanks, Paulo!
Any time a copyright holder asks Google to remove a YouTube video, a funny thing happens: Google complies. But the company also adds a bit of metadata to let you know why the video has been pulled down. YouTomb is a site that scans YouTube for that metadata and shows you a list of recently removed videos.
You can't actually watch any videos on YouTomb. But you can find out who asked for them to be removed. You can also check out the site's stats page to see which copyright holders have requested the most takedowns. Currently TV Tokyo, Viacom, Warner Brothers, WWE, and NBC are near the top of the list. When we checked, YouTomb said it was monitoring 223280 videos, and had identified 4396 videos that had been removed for alleged copyright violations and 13363 videos that had been removed for other reasons.
YouTube has been linking copyrighted videos uploaded by third parties to their respective content owners. This occurred with a Modest Mouse video, which YouTube linked to the official Modest Mouse page. The link says "Contains Content From: Sony BMG," and it may be YouTube's way of preventing content owners from removing videos uploaded by fans.
Up until now, YouTube has said it shouldn't be held responsible for the copyright violations performed by its members, but it has also been very cooperative in removing copyrighted material when asked. Last year Google announced a video identification system, permitting content owners to identify (and choose how to share or remove) their content, so it seems this is what's at play here.
We're sure YouTube doesn't like to remove member videos. It's bad for business: a site with unhappy members typically means a site that eventually has no members. But if YouTube's just linking videos instead of removing them, it must be a positive step for consumers in the ongoing Copyright war.
BitTorrent tracker TorrentSpy may have shut down last month, but that wasn't enough to prevent a federal judge from slapping the site with a $111 million fine yesterday. While BitTorrent didn't host any copyrighted materials on their own servers, the service did make it easy for users to illegally trade files. And the judge ruled that TorrentSpy's operators should pay $30,000 for each of the 3,699 instances of copyright infringement shown in the case.
Anyone familiar with sites like TorrentSpy knows that it's possible the site got off easy, as there were probably far more than 3699 copyrighted files made available through the site. On the other hand, TorrentSpy has already declared bankrupty and is incapable of paying the high fine. If the site hadn't already shut down, this ruling would most certainly have forced it to do so. A lawyer for TorrentSpy says the company plans to appeal.
This case was the first major test of the legality of BitTorrent sites in the US. Something tells us it won't be the last.
A federal judge in New york has ruled that the RIAA cannot sue people for simply making copyrighted music available for download. Rather, the recording industry needs to demonstrate that someone has actually downloaded the file. Otherwise, it's not clear that a crime actually took place.
It's much trickier to demonstrate that someone actually downloaded the files you made available. And when we say you, we mean the figurative you. We're quite confident that no Download Squad readers are actually violating the law. This particular case isn't over yet, since the RIAA feels it can demonstrate that the defendent actually distributed copyrighted files, and didn't just make them available.
The judge in the case also found that while making files available might not be enough to justify a lawsuit, an "offer to distribute" copyrighted works is. What's the difference? If you don't password protect your WiFi router, your neighbors might be able to download files from your computer, which you've "made available." But if you designate a folder on your PC that has files you're willing to share with other Limewire users, that might be construed as an "offer to distribute."
While many of the files you can download using BitTorrent are illegal, copyrighted works such as Hollywood movies, music from major labels, or commercial software, there's nothing inherently illegal about BitTorrent. It's just an internet protocol, much like FTP or HTTP.
So it stands to reason that if you want to avoid illegal downloads, there should be a go-to location for legal torrents, perhaps with an easy to remember name like LegalTorrents. Hey, what do you know? There is. LegalTorrents actually launched way back in 2003 when BitTorrent was still pretty new. This week the site has relaunched with a nice, clean interface and a grand total of 44 files you can download without guilt. That includes 9 songs, 9 movies, and 3 video games. We'd complain that there's no way to search for torrents, but the rather tiny selection kind of makes the point moot right now.
Anyone can download files, but you'll need to register for an account to upload torrents of Creative Commons licensed media. Hopefully the selection will grow soon, as LegalTorrents is really a great idea. But could someone please add a search feature before the content library grows too large?
A judge has thrown out a suit filed by a group of students who claimed that the anti-plagiarism software Turnitin violated student copyrights. Turnitin scans student papers to determine the likelihood that they were plagiarized, and saves a copy in a database to make it easier to detect fraudulent papers in the future. But the students said iParadigms, the company behind Turnitin was essentially using their works without permission, which amounts to copyright infringement.
The judge presiding over the case ruled that since iParadigms does not republish the stories and "makes no use of any work's particular expressive or creative content beyond the limited use of comparison with other works." Therefore, the judge decided that the whole thing falls under "fair use." There's also the fact that the students kind of, sort of give permission for their papers to be scanned. Really what happens it that schools and teachers decide to use the system and students who don't want to feed their papers into a big computer can refuse to turn them in and take an F. Not really much of a choice, is it?
Microsoft has launched a new website aimed at teaching kids about intellectual property in the hopes of discouraging future generations from illegally downloading and using copyrighted music, movies, and images. MyBytes features quotes about the importance of intellectual property from content producers, a music mixing application for kids to create their own content (which they can then share with others), and video interviews with teenagers, most of whom say they don't really know anything about copyright law.
Microsoft has also released the findings of a survey stating that 49% of teens between 7th and 10th grade don't know "the rules and guidelines" for downloading media from the internet. But 82% of teens who said they were familiar with those rules said that people who downloaded content illegally should be punished. That's compared with 57% from teenagers who were unfamiliar with the law.
In its ever-continuing quest to prevent piracy, the RIAA announced in a State of the Net conference on January 30th, that it likes the idea of filters on the end user's platform that will detect if a user is doing anything illegal with copyrighted material.
Why would anyone want to install such a filter? In a video excerpt from the conference over at Public Knowledge, an RIAA representative points out that users will install filters that benefit them such as antivirus software - therefore, copyright filters could be bundled with anti-virus software, integrated into modems, or put together with some sort of package from an ISP, to help detect copyright violations. The purpose, of such filters, would be primarily to create a workaround that prevents users from using encryption to avoid detection.
The question of the day then: how much money would the music industry have to pay anti-virus/spyware/malware companies to cover the cost of customers switching to alternatives that come without the copyright filter?
It's hard to keep a good (or bad) pirate down. Just like Captain Hook, Jack Sparrow, or Patchy the Pirate, popular BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay seems to have at least nine lives. In a completely unsurprising move, Swedish authorities have filed charges against the founders of the site, claiming they have facilitated the P2P transfers of copyrighted files, which you know, is true.
Sure, the four defendants could certainly be found guilty. But here's the thing: the site isn't going anywhere. Once it became clear that prosecution was imminent in 2006, the Pirate Bay moved its servers outside of Sweden, meaning that country's government doesn't have the authority to shut them down. In fact, the people who run the site claim they don't even know where the servers are at this point.
Of course, even if authorities in Sweden, the US, or any other country concerned with copyright law could shut down the Pirate Bay, there are plenty of other BitTorrent tracking services out there. And because of the decentralized nature of BitTorrent file transfers, there's virtually no way to eliminate all illegal file transfers.
On the other hand, people used to say the same thing about digital music transfers. And while people certainly still trade copyrighted music files, Apple, Amazon, and other companies have made it easier to buy your music online than to steal it. Wouldn't it be nice if copyright holders focus on providing users with good reasons to pay for movies and software rather than spending time and money going after pirates.
RapidShare, the popular file hosting site used by developers and pirates alike has apparently been shut down at least temporarily by a court order. Heise Online is reporting that GEMA, a German royalties collection agency has filed a complaint against RapidShare, claiming that the service hosts copyrighted materials, which it's fairly safe to say is true.
GEMA wants RapidShare to provide details on how many files hosted on the site are copyrighted works of GEMA members. RapidShare has historically said that it does not inspect the files uploaded by users. We've seen companies like YouTube demonstrate in recent years that it is possible to build copyright detection software to inspect for illegally uploaded files. But we've also seen that no system so far is foolproof, so it should be interesting to see if RapidShare fights the complaint, promises to implement some sort of filters, or fades off into oblivion.
Another open question is what will happen to all the RapidShare members who have shelled out money for paid accounts? While RapidShare has provided some basic services for free, users have to pay subscription fees for access to faster downloads and and simultaneous downloads.
Update: As several people have pointed out in the comments, RapidShare appears to be back online. The reports of a site shutdown were apparently false and everything is back to normal.
The Pirate Bay, an epitome of copyright defiance in the P2P realm, has become something of a holy grail for prosecutors. Assuming that throwing more paperwork at them must eventually do the trick, Pirate Bay admin Peter Sunde tells Ars Technica that they have just received over 4,000 pages containing information regarding the prosecutors' current investigation.
But that doesn't bother Sunde, as he says that if him and the other admins are indeed convicted they will "just appeal all the way to the European Union court. So in five years time this might be settled."
Considering the amount of media attention these actions bring the Pirate Bay, it almost seems detrimental to the efforts of the prosecutors. Not to mention it doesn't make the copyright defenders look environmentally savvy when they dish out 4,000 pages more than anyone probably ever wants to see of investigative materials.
Judging from Sunde's reaction, it looks like all this paper might hope to achieve is providing a fully stocked emergency back up for when the toilet paper runs out over at the Pirate Bay. And maybe injure the back of the mailman who delivered them.
The age-old battle of copyright and artist freedom keeps clanging away in the distance, and are we any better off than we were when DAT machines were castrated in the 80's? I read a report this morning about a UK band called "Show of Hands" who claims they are dependent upon so-called pirates who download their music and share it with friends. This isn't much different than Trent Reznor making his music freely available online (and my wife reports the show here in town didn't look any smaller than the ones in the 90's -- possibly even bigger since Reznor has a new legion of fans younger than us). But the music industry sticks by the mantra "a download is a lost sale, and that is theft." Or, as TorrentFreak puts it, "there is no such animal as 'piracy as promotion.'"
