Capcom’s never really had much of a consumer-friendly reputation. Between being all about SOPA and utilizing innovative DRM measures such as “You only get one save file per game cartridge ever at all,” it would be tough for the company to claim some kind of goodwill dividend should it screw up and find the need for one. And, boy, could Capcom ever use such a dividend amongst PC gamers right now.
The screw up was advertising on Steam that the RE-reboot, Resident Evil Revelations 2, would include a local, split-screen co-operative mode, selling the game under the umbrella of that promise, and then revealing only after sales had begun that local co-op had never been planned for the PC version of the game.
Month: March 2015
AT&T’s $30 ‘Don’t Be Snooped On’ Fee Is Even Worse Than Everybody Thought
Last week we noted that while AT&T has been trying to match Google Fiber pricing in small portions of several markets, it has been busily doing it in a very AT&T fashion. While the company is offering a $70, 1 Gbps service in some locations, the fine print indicates that users can only get that price point if they agree to AT&T’s Internet Preferences snoopvertising program. That program uses deep packet inspection to track your online behavior down to the second — and if you want to opt out, that $70 1 Gbps broadband connection quickly becomes significantly more expensive.
While most people thought this was rather dumb, AT&T actually received kudos on some fronts for trying something new. Apparently, the logic goes, AT&T charging you a major monthly fee to not be snooped on will result in some kind of privacy arms race resulting in better services and lower prices for all. While sometimes that sort of concept works (Google and Apple scurrying to profess who loves encryption more, for example), anybody who believes this is a good precedent doesn’t know the U.S. telecom market or AT&T very well.
As Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOM notes, it’s not as simple as just paying AT&T a $30 to not be snooped on. AT&T actually makes it very difficult to even find the “please don’t spy on me option,” and saddles the process with a number of loopholes to prevent you from choosing it. In fact, you’re not even able to compare prices unless you plug in an address that’s in AT&T’s footprint, but currently doesn’t have AT&T service. Meanwhile, according to Higginbotham’s math, even if you’re successful in signing up, that $30 privacy fee is actually much more depending on your chosen options. If you just want broadband, opting out of AT&T snoopvertising will actually run you $44
The Pirate Bay Will be Blocked in Portugal
As the archrival of many copyright groups, The Pirate Bay has become one of the most censored websites on the Internet in recent years.
Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site and the list continues to expand.
Last month French ISPs started blocking The Pirate Bay and last week the Intellectual Property Court in Portugal ordered a similar measure against local Internet providers.
The case was brought by the Association for Copyright Management, Producers and Publishers (GEDIPE), who argued that their members are financially hurt by TPB’s services.
In its verdict the court ruled that Vodafone, MEO and NOS have to prevent users from visiting the torrent site within 30 days. If they fail to do so the ISPs face a fine of 2,500 euros per day.
The injunction marks the first time that Internet providers in Portugal are required to block a website on copyright grounds. Previously there were cases against unknown website owners, but not ISPs.
“In the case of Pirate Bay, the judge decided to blame the Internet provider, which now face a financial penalty,” GEDIPE boss Paulo Santos comments.
Pirate Bay is currently among the 100 most visited sites in Portugal. Whether the blockade will stop people from pirating has yet to be seen. Several other TPB proxies remain available, and so are dozens of other torrent sites.
GEDIPE is urging the Internet providers to discuss voluntary actions to target other pirate sites. If they refuse to do so, the group will go back to court to demand more injunctions.
“Internet providers are not our enemies. If they combat pirate sites they will also be defending their own content distribution businesses. It is time to sit down and negotiate blocking measures that don’t require the courts to get involved,” Santos says.
“If Internet providers don’t want to go down down this road we have to move forward with injunctions targeting dozens of sites that promote sharing of pirated content,” he adds.
The ISPs have previously spoken out against blocking measures, arguing that they will block legitimate content as well. They still have the option to appeal the injunction but thus far it’s unclear if they will.
Copyright Monopoly Fraudsters Need To Go To Jail With Heavy Damages
Last week there was a story on TorrentFreak about a copyright monopolist who had gone absolutely insane and sent so-called “takedown notices” to everybody and their brother, from EFF to TOR – basically anybody with a download page.
It’s a complete mystery why this isn’t a criminal behavior. The fact that it isn’t is why it continues and harms innovation, creativity, free speech, and the Internet.
The Swedish Pirate Party had a very clear policy on crimes like this: if you lied about holding an exclusive right to something, the same penalty that would have applied to an infringer of that exclusive right would instead apply to you. This is only fair, after all: you are infringing on the distribution of a creative work by dishonest means.
For repeat offenders, or organizations that committed this crime on a commercial basis or commercial gain, like that idiot record label in the TorrentFreak story – they would be declared criminal organizations and have all their assets seized. The individuals doing so for commercial gain would go to jail for a couple of years.
The thing is, this should not even be contentious. This is how we deal with this kind of criminal act in every – every – other aspect of society. If you lie as part of commercial operations and hurt somebody else’s rights or business, you are a criminal. If you do so repeatedly or for commercial gain, direct or indirect, you’re having your ill-gotten gains seized. This isn’t rocket science. This is standard bloody operating procedure.
The copyright industry goes ballistic at this proposal, of course, and try to portray themselves as rightsless victims – when the reality is that they have been victimizing everybody else after making the entire planet rightsless before their intellectual deforestation.
Piracy Lawsuits Dominated By Just Three Movie Companies
Thanks to the development of advanced file-sharing systems and fast Internet connections, lawsuits aimed at alleged Internet pirates have become commonplace over the past decade and are showing no signs of disappearing anytime soon.
The statistics behind the threats have been documented periodically but now a detailed study of IP litigation as a whole has painted a clearer picture of trends during the past 10 years.
Published by Matthew Sag, Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, IP Litigation in United States District Courts: 1994 to 2014 provides a review of all IP litigation in U.S. district courts over the past two decades to include copyright, patent and trademark lawsuits over 190,000 case filings.
Perhaps unsurprisingly one of the paper’s key findings is that Internet file-sharing has transformed copyright litigation in the United States, in one area in particular.
“To the extent that the rate of copyright litigation has increased over the last two decades, that increase appears to be entirely attributable to lawsuits against anonymous Internet file sharers,” the paper reads.
In broad terms the paper places lawsuits against alleged pirates into two categories – those with an aim of discouraging illegal file-sharing and those that exist to monetize online infringement.
Category one is dominated by lawsuits filed by the RIAA against users of software such as Kazaa and LimeWire who downloaded and shared tracks without permission. Announced in 2003, the wave seriously got underway during 2004 and persisted until 2008, straggling cases aside.
Category two is dominated by the so-called copyright trolls that have plagued file-sharing networks since 2010. These companies, largely from the adult movie sector, track down alleged file-sharers with the aim of extracting cash settlements.
DOJ Inspector General Tells Congress That FBI Isn’t Letting His Office Do Its Job… Again
The FBI is still actively thwarting its oversight. Last fall, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz informed the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI was routinely denying his office documents it needed to perform investigations. The withheld documents included everything from electronic surveillance information to organizational charts. Not only did the FBI refuse to hand over requested documents, but it also stonewalled OIG investigations for so long that “officials under review [had] retired or left the agencies before the report [was] complete.”
Nearly six months later, the situation remains unchanged. Horowitz is again informing the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI is still less than interested in assisting his office. The same stonewalling tactics and withholding of information continues, preventing the IG from fully examining the DEA’s use of administrative subpoenas.
US Court Rules That Kim Dotcom Is A ‘Fugitive’ And Thus DOJ Can Take His Money
In the long, convoluted and complex legal battles facing Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, there was some bizarre stuff that happened late last year. As you may recall, early on, the US government seized basically all of his stuff and money. Dotcom has made efforts to get some of it returned, as it’s tough to fight the most powerful government in the world when it’s holding onto all of your money. Keep in mind from our previous discussions on asset seizure and forfeiture, the government can basically seize whatever it wants, just by claiming it was somehow related to a crime, but the seizure is only a temporary process. If the government wants to keep it, it then needs to go through a separate process known as civil asset forfeiture, which is effectively the government suing the assets. Back in July, the US government moved to forfeit everything it had seized from Dotcom in a new lawsuit with the catchy name USA v. All Assets Listed In Attachment A, And All Interest, Benefits, And Assets Traceable Thereto. As you may have guessed, Attachment A [pdf] is basically all of Kim Dotcom’s money and posessions.
Back in November, the DOJ argued that it should get to keep all of Kim Dotcom’s money and stuff because he’s a “fugitive”, which is a bizarre and ridiculous way to portray Kim Dotcom, who has been going through a long and protracted legal process over his potential extradition from New Zealand (though he’s offered to come to the US willingly if the government lets him mount a real defense by releasing his money). Dotcom’s lawyers told the court that it’s ridiculous to call him a fugitive, but it appears that Judge Liam O’Grady didn’t buy it.
In a ruling that was just posted a little while ago, O’Grady sided with the government, and gave the DOJ all of Dotcom’s things. You can read the full reasoning here and it seems to take on some troubling logic. Dotcom’s lawyers pointed out, as many of us have, that there is no secondary copyright infringement under criminal law, but the judge insists that there’s enough to show “conspiracy to commit copyright infringement.” But the reasoning here is bizarre. Part of it is the fact that Megaupload did remove links to infringing content from its top 100 downloads list. To me, that seems like evidence of the company being a good actor in the space, and not trying to serve up more infringing downloads. To Judge O’Grady and the DOJ, it’s somehow evidence of a conspiracy. No joke.
Stupid Patent of the Month: Attorney “Inventor” Games the System
The worst patent trolls bring weak cases and use the cost of defending a lawsuit as leverage to force settlements. A company called Joao Bock Transaction Systems LLC (“JBTS”) has elevated this business model to an art form. The company is associated with patent attorney and prolific “inventor” Raymond Joao. Apparently not content with drafting patents on behalf of others, Joao began to file his own patents. His companies have since launched dozens of lawsuits against technology ranging from streaming video to financial transactions. Of course, if you talk to the people who actually pioneered real-world technology, they’ve never heard of Joao or his companies. From all indications, Joao is solely in business of filing paper patents and forming companies to sue.
While all of Joao’s patents are contenders, we’ve chosen US Patent No. 7,096,003 (the ’003 patent), titled “Transaction Security Apparatus,” as our Stupid Patent of the Month. This patent, part of a family that includes US Patent No. 6,529,725 (the ’725 patent), relates to electronic financial transactions. The patent purports to describe a new system for secure transactions that includes a step of obtaining authorization from the account owner. The claims are drafted in vague, functional terms with language like “a processing device” that “processes information regarding a banking transaction” and “generates a signal containing information for authorizing or disallowing the transaction.” JBTS has been asserting the patent against dozens of banks and financial services companies, essentially saying that the patent covers any electronic transaction with a confirmation step.
What makes Joao’s patent extra special, however, is the staggering number of patent claims. All patents end with at least one claim (the claims are the part of the patent that are supposed to alert the public to the boundaries of the invention). The average number of claims per patent is around 20. The ’003 patent, however, has an astonishing 424 claims: a seemingly endless list of small, indeed mostly trivial, variations on the same idea. The related ‘725 patent has another 340 claims, bringing the total to over 750 claims all based off the same application.
We do not believe there is any legitimate reason for Joao to include so many claims in his patent applications. In fact, it appears this is done solely to allow him to game the system. First, it allows him to raise the cost of defending a lawsuit—for example, in its complaints, JBTS doesn’t identify a single claim that’s allegedly infringed, likely to prevent a motion to dismiss. More disturbingly, JBTS has used the duplicative claims to continue asserting the patents despite multiple defeats in court. Each time the company loses, it picks out some new claims and asserts those, even though they are largely identical to claims already thrown out.
MPAA PUSHES FOR ICANN POLICY CHANGES TO TARGET “PIRATE” DOMAINS
The MPAA is one of the ICANN partners shaping future policy for the domain name system. With Hollywood being the driving force behind the group the MPAA is particularly interested in making it harder for pirate sites to register and keep their domains, as recent efforts show.
mpaa-logoThe Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the main oversight body for the Internet’s global domain name system.
Among other things, ICANN develops policies for accredited registrars to prevent abuse and illegal use of domain names.
What not many people know, however, is that the MPAA is actively involved in shaping these policies.
As a member of several ICANN stakeholder groups the lobby outfit is keeping a close eye on the movie industry’s interests. Most of these efforts are directed against pirate sites.
For example, in ICANN’s most recent registrar agreements it’s clearly stated that domain names should not be used for copyright infringement.
As the MPAA’s Alex Deacon explains, these agreements “contain new obligations for ICANN’s contract partners to promptly investigate and respond to use of domain names for illegal and abusive activities, including those related to IP infringement.”
The MPAA hopes that “the community” will take these new obligations seriously and make sure that they are enforced.