12 important blog laws.

Posted a few days back, this blog on blogger law, provides 12 laws that bloggers should follow for their own protection. The blog covers all points such as using images, or directly linking to an article or file. This list is a valuable resource for the serious blogger.

CNN to release presidential debates under Creative Commons.

CNN announced this weekend that they will release presidential debates filmed by their channel under the Creative Commons (CC) license. “Due to the historical nature of presidential debates and the significance of these forums to the American public, CNN debate coverage will be made available without restrictions at the conclusion of each live debate.” CNN stated Saturday.

This is a great thing, this means that presidential debate footage will be available and free to use for all. Meaning it would be legal to upload on YouTube, or also on your own website. Releasing under a CC type license will allow for the free distribution of the debates, instead of the commercial ridden forms that MSNBC has released from the last debates.

Prosecutor Announces Charges Against Pirate Bay

A news article in Sweden's English edition of The Local, states that the people responsible for running a popular file sharing website thePirateBay.org may be facing charges. A case like this could mean something, because the site does not contain any illegal material but it does link to it. Sweden used to be a safe haven for file sharing websites, however with the raid on thepiratebay servers last year that changed. It will be interesting to see whether or not this makes it to trial, and whether under Swedish law they will be found guilty.

AACS: "Bloggers crossed the line"

Last week the encryption key for HD-DVD's was leaked on many tech blogs, and quickly spread all across the web. The encryption key would allow for software or hardware decryptors to playback or copy the new form of DVD media.

An AACS executive commented that just because the key was leaked does not mean that copy protection was broken, instead he suggests that with the key HDDVD's can only be played in a couple software players, and they cannot be copied.

Executives are going after bloggers who posted the key. In particular the site Digg.com which recieved thousands of posts containing the key eventually gave in and stopped removing it. The AACS served them a legal "cease and desist" and now they are taking care of it.

Congress taking an active role in campus piracy

Congress has been putting pressure on universities to better protect copyright laws. Lawmakers have sent out surveys to 19 universities in order to find out what is being done about the issue and how they are suited to prevent it in the future. Congress states that universities have an obligation to ensure that students do not use campus connections for illegal purposes.

The surveys are expected to aid congress in drafting new laws to protect copyrights on campuses. It is unclear whether universities will reply at all however.

Ohio State bans all Peer-to-Peer applications: other universities to follow?

Ohio State, which was recently named one of the top 25 colleges with the most cases of copyright infringement, has decided to take action by banning all forms of Peer-To-Peer file sharing software. While this will prevent most people from pirating media on their campus it also prevents the legitimate uses of P2P software, a risk that none of the other universities on the top 25 list have yet to take. Other schools are watching though to see what effect it has on its students. A positive result could lead more schools into making a ban on their campuses as well. A lot of people cite the defense that legitimate P2P must be protected, but how many people actually use this software for legal purposes? Not many. There are sites like LegalTorrents or many Linux distributions that use bit torrent as a means of distributing their install discs. That being said I think that more universities will follow suit in the near future with a blanket ban.

Music industry to cave in on downloads?

Ty Roberts, who is the CTO of Gracenote, said recently that the music industry "was about to cave in" soon in the near future to DRM music. DRM or Digital Rights Mangement Software prevents users from copying songs or whole cd's. This practice is not standard, and even DRM is not standard as there are many ways of doing it.

Google Calls Viacom Suit on YouTube Unfounded

On monday Google announced[Ny Times] that it would not back down from the lawsuit it is facing from Viacom. (Previous Post on the issue) Google claims that the "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act will protect them. Viacom is suing Google's YouTube to take down over 100,000 videos that according to Viacom violate copyrights that they hold. They have already messed up one at least this week however.

Viacom responded to Google's claim that they were a "Safe Harbor" by stating that Google does not qualify as a "safe harbor", and that it knows that infringing material exists on their site.

Google also stated last month that they will be soon unveiling tools that will make it easier for copyright owners to identify their copyrighted material and have it removed from the site.

US singles out China and Russia on piracy watch list

The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) has compiled a list of 12 countries who lack proper protections of American Intellectual Property, or lack intellectual property protection alltogether. At the top of this list were both Russia and China. Both countries are not able to crack down on piracy, in China experts believe that it is due to lack of enforcement at local levels. Other countries on the Priority Watch List this year include Argentina, Chile, Egypt, India, Israel, Lebanon, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and Venezuela.

Full story.

Anti-Piracy Group Pirates data

Story here.

To sum it up, a British anti-piracy group International Chamber of Commerce's Commercial Crime Services branch, stole massive amounts of data from Gieschen Consultancy. The ICC-CCS also came out with a similar service to the one provided by Gieschen just a few days after the contract between the two of them expired. The ICC-CCS threatened Gieschen with a lawsuit, however this deserves to be public. How can an organization who tries to stop intellectual property theft have any credibility when they have committed the crime themselves?

Supreme Court ruling makes "obvious" patents harder to defend

The Supreme Court reinforced a previous ruling yesterday that "mandated that an invention could not be patented if a "person having ordinary skill in the art" would consider it obvious." The case is discussed here.

The current patent system is messed up and needs fixing. "Obviousness" is narrow and vague.

Viacom Admits Error

Viacom recently sent out DMCA notices to users posting copyrighted material on Google's YouTube. One such instance involved a parody of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report", entitled "Stop the Falsiness." This video uses clips from the actual show, but it uses them properly as a commentary about the show.

Last week Viacom dropped the case against the creators of this video, and now the video is back up.

It is good that they dropped the case though they should have never filed a DMCA complaint in the first place.

European Parliament passes controversial copyright directive

The Second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive or IPRED2, was recently passed by the European Parliament. This Directive states that copyright infringement at a commercial level as well as inciting those infringements is punishable buy up to 300,000 euros and up to 4 years in jail.

The directive is ostensibly designed to crack down on commercial piracy and counterfeiting operations, but critics warned that, thanks to the vague terminology of the directive, it could apply much more widely. They note that no definitions are offered for the terms "incitement" or "commercial scale," opening the possibility that the courts could interpret them to include innovators building new media products. Those terms could be interpreted, for example, to hold ISPs liable for the infringing activities of their users.

- Timothy B. Lee

Due to the vague wording in this legislation, it causes concern. What is "commercial scale"?

Either way this directive is losing support with each step it goes through. For now the directive will go to the Council of the European Union, and hopefully they will reject it and send it back to the European Parliament.

The Best and Worst Internet Laws

Eric Goldman, a Law Professor writes about the best and the mainly the worst internet laws.

Saddle River Flooding.

This has nothing to do with the subject matter of my blog, but my town is flooded and I went to go investigate. Many streets in the section of Rochelle Park near the Saddle River are flooded, including the police station (great city planning RP) and people are being rescued by boat. As I was leaving the flooded scene on passaic street I saw the Carlstat fire department bringing another boat. I am not sure if they are just searching or if there are people that are actually being rescued.

I had a digital camera on me but of course the battery was dead, I took a few pictures with my phone which (most) are terrible quality. I may go out later and take a few more with a real camera.

Decent Quality pictures:

Car stuck in the water
Debris

Crappy quality:

1 2 3

Methods of collecting evidence revealed.

This article explains how a German company has been collecting user information in peer-to-peer networks such as Gnutella and eDonkey as well as bittorrent. Other companies in the United States are likely to use this sort of technology as well, but the question is whether this is enough to reasonably prove that a file has been shared by the defendant. The main argument here is how can you tell who is responsible for sharing a file? Many people have unsecured wireless networks still, and in the legal documents contained here [pdf] (thanks to torrent freak), it is left to the individual to make sure that no one else uses their network for illegal purposes.

New Bill Before Congress, To Help Colleges Fight Piracy.

A bill was introduced before the House Committee on Education and Labor by Rep. Ric Keller [R-FL], that will amend the Higher Education Act,

...[which] supplies federal money to universities, allowing that money to be used for programs that reduce illegal downloading of copyrighted content.

It is unclear right now what this bill fully entails, because the full text has not yet been released to the public.

It seems though that the lobbyists for the big entertainment companies are making a push for this. The bill was introduced the same week that the RIAA sent out pre-litigation letters to students of colleges nation-wide, and now this week the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has named the top 25 movie piracy schools. The Higher Education Act is due to expire this summer, and there is sure to be a push to extend the life of the HEA. The big companies may be trying to bury this into the renewal so that they have another way of trying to control college students.

iTunes to sell DRM-free music.

iTunes, and EMI went public today annoucing that they would be selling all music produced by EMI on Apple's iTunes with no copyright protection beginning in May. Also the songs will be higher quality, now coming at 256kbps, instead of 128kbps.

DRM, or Digital Rights Management Software, in reference to iTunes music files, is used to limit the number of times that the file can be copied. The intent of DRM is to prevent piracy (even though no one would pirate AAC audio files anyway, but thats another story..). There are plenty of legitimate reasons to want to copy a song file more then a few times. For example you may want to make backups just incase your computer crashes, or you may get new devices that you would like to place your song on.

It is a good step for EMI (which is part of the Big Four record companies that run the RIAA), but I do not think it will improve their sales much. In addition to raising quality and removing DRM technology they also jacked up the price to $1.29 per song. It works out to be around the same cost as a CD, yet you have no physically produced copy. It would be nice to see more and more companies selling DRM free audio files, although a drop in price is realistically the best approach.

Link to Arstechnica story by Eric Bangeman

The music companies, facing a long-term decline in sales, had resisted freeing up their digital songs from restrictions because they were afraid consumers would make numerous copies that would deprive the companies and their recording artists of revenue.

But peer-to-peer Internet sites that freely trade music files have flourished anyway, with five billion downloads last year, compared with 509 million songs downloaded from official digital music services, according to the NPD Group.

New York Times

Entertainment Companies need to realize that they cannot run their business the same now in the Digital Age, as before. Their loss of sales is from their inability to adapt to new technology soon enough. They resist change compulsively, however with DRM-free music they may be moving in the right direction.

Viacom v. YouTube

"Entertainment giant Viacom, home to cable television networks such as MTV and Comedy Central, has taken its ongoing battle with Google's YouTube to federal court, suing the video Web site over what it calls "brazen" copyright violations.

Viacom, which is asking for $1 billion in damages, alleges that YouTube does little or nothing to prevent users from posting copyrighted videos on its site, largely because such popular videos -- including clips from Comedy Central's "South Park" and "The Colbert Report" and Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants" -- help drive viewers to the ads that appear on YouTube."

From the Washington Post


Viacom claims that YouTube (Google) has been actively allowing copyrighted material to be posted online. YouTube states in its Terms of Use page that the user is responsible for making sure that they own the rights to the file that they are uploading. YouTube regularly deletes videos that are deemed spam, pornographic, or hate videos, but it does not delete videos that are copyrighted even though they must know that their site does contain illegal material which violates the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Viacom's lawsuit is based on the fact that YouTube does not take preventive measures to protect copyright owners, but instead forces the copyright holders to take initiative and file a DMCA notice with YouTube in order to have their material removed from the site.

A copyright holder must provide all of the following in order to get their copyrighted content removed:

"D. In particular, if you are a copyright owner or an agent thereof and believe that any User Submission or other content infringes upon your copyrights, you may submit a notification pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") by providing our Copyright Agent with the following information in writing (see 17 U.S.C 512(c)(3) for further detail):

(i) A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed;

(ii) Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed, or, if multiple copyrighted works at a single online site are covered by a single notification, a representative list of such works at that site;

(iii) Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity and that is to be removed or access to which is to be disabled and information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to locate the material;

(iv) Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact you, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail;

(v) A statement that you have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and

(vi) A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that you are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed."

(Source: YouTube Terms of Use)

Viacom makes the point that YouTube is purposely leaving copyrighted material on their site in order to draw users into their site so that they can make money on the advertising. While this may be true, just before Viacom filed lawsuit against YouTube they partnered with a new video sharing site called Joost, which claims to protect copyrighted material more strictly then other sites. (As well as show full episodes of Viacom owned programs online, and legally). It seems that Viacom is trying to take down YouTube. And by legally having the rights to show TV shows from networks like Comedy Central, and Nickelodeon they may have a shot.

New round of RIAA settlements, aimed at college campuses

A recording industry group that has been offering settlements to college students suspected of sharing music online says more than a quarter of the alleged music pirates have accepted the offer."

The offer by the RIAA is a pre-litigation settlement, meaning that no subpoenas have been issued, and no lawsuit filed. The settlements typically are $750 per song allegedly downloaded by the student. A website was provided with the letter that was sent to the students, allowing them to pay their settlements online with a credit card. The average settlements ranged from $3000-$5000. 405 students from 23 different college campuses were issued letters, and the RIAA itself reported that 116 took the settlement. That leaves 71% of those issued that did not take the settlement. That being said the RIAA still believes their campaign has been a success so far. More letters can be expected next month.

"A student who received a pre-litigation letter told Ars that he refused to engage their offer because they offer zero proof of what is alleged. "It's like receiving blackmail. 'We know what you did, pay us' is the message, but they don't really know me or what I have done," he wrote. The student wishes to remain anonymous.

He knows that students who ignore the pre-litigation letters are just asking the RIAA to pursue them more, but he hopes that when the RIAA is actually faced with having to produce evidence that they'll simply come up short. The current approach by the RIAA is to simply tell students that each song shared is a $750 violation, so one's fine is often calculated based on the number of songs the RIAA says that they've shared. Yet the RIAA offers no proof of their claims, while sometimes trying to make students feel like they're getting a deal.

(By: Ken Fisher from Ars Technica)

The RIAA is trying to scare college students into paying a fine while they do not provide any evidence of any violation. They mentioned as well that if they were to pay up no record of the lawsuit would appear on the students records in the future. It is astounding that as many as 116 people would admit to copyright infringement without any evidence that has been proven reasonable in a court of them doing so. As mentioned in Ken Fisher's article, the RIAA could 'come up short' and not be able to prove anything.

With over 60 million estimated users of peer-to-peer software in the United States, firing random lawsuits at the public does not seem to have a deterrent affect. By suing college students I believe that they feel they cannot lose because more then half of college students admit to using such software, and also they have a lot at stake. No one wants to have the burden of a lawsuit on their record when applying for jobs fresh out of college. The RIAA knows this, and is taking advantage of it.


Also I would like to comment on the wording used by the RIAA in their own report of the settlements.

"Continuing its efforts to address the extensive music theft that persists on college campuses, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), on behalf of the major record companies, today sent a second wave of 405 pre-litigation settlement letters to 23 universities."

(Taken from http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/032107.asp)

The RIAA continues to use the word theft in their reports. Theft entails that someones property has been taken from them. Theft is also a criminal offense. The issue here is copyright infringement, which does not involve property being taken but copied. Copyright infringement is also not a crime in America, it is a matter for the civil court system.