The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has just published its latest submission to the U.S. Government, providing an overview of countries it believes should better protect the interests of the copyright industry.
The IIPA, which includes a wide range of copyright groups including the MPAA, RIAA, BSA and ESA, has listed its complaints against a whole host of countries. As in previous years, Canada was discussed in detail with the recommendation to put it on the 2014 Special 301 ‘watch list’.
One of the main criticisms against Canada is that the country offers a home to many pirate sites. The country recently revised its copyright law but that has done little to address this problem, IIPA believes.
“Although there has been some improvement in recent years, Canada still has far to go to rectify its reputation as a safe haven for Internet pirates. Indeed, a number of the world’s most popular Internet sources dedicated to online theft of copyright material retain connections to Canada.”
Among others, the report lists the popular torrent sites Torrentz.eu, Kickass.to and streaming portal Solarmovie.is as partially Canada-based.
Canada’s inaction against these websites has forced copyright holders to request website blockades in other countries, IIPA claims. In addition, these pirate sites hamper the growth of legal services.
“As long as these sites continue to use Canada as a base, efforts to provide a space within which legitimate, licensed services can take root and grow are undermined, not only in Canada, but around the world,” the report reads.
Category: Copyright
YouTube Flags Cat Purring as Copyright Infringing Music
Week in and week out automated bots detect and report millions of alleged copyright infringements, which are then processed by the receiving site without a human ever looking at them.
Unfortunately this process is far from flawless, resulting in many false and inaccurate DMCA claims.
For regular Internet users YouTube’s takedown process is particularly problematic. We’ve highlighted this issue before, but an example that reached us this week attacks one of the Internet’s darlings, a cat.
Last March, YouTube user Digihaven uploaded one hour of video loops featuring his cat Phantom, purring, as cats do. The video didn’t go viral but appealed to a niche public, and more recently also two major music publishers.
Nearly a year after the video was posted Digihaven was informed by YouTube that Phantom is “pirate” purring. Apparently, part of the 12 second loop belongs to EMI Music Publishing and PRS.
In the copyright notice YouTube states that the cat purring is flagged by the Content-ID system as an infringing copy of the musical composition “Focus.”
Peter Sunde: Pirate Bay Still Has The Right To Defend Itself
The .SE registry targeted in the prosecutor’s case does not want to take this action. They look at it as removing a street address on the basis that a crime was committed there.
But they’re all making it so simple. The fact is that, even though I despise the current version of The Pirate Bay, nothing illegal happens there. And actually, no such case has even been tried as the case against me and the others a few years back was about a totally different version of TPB.
The technology back then was different and the verdicts handed down referenced the fact that three separate parts of the system were in play in order to breach copyright. First the search engine (which is still there), then a tracking system (which was removed many years ago) and a database of .torrent files (which was removed years ago too).
This means that TPB today is in a totally different technical state than it was in the previous (and also very corrupt) court case. It also means that there’s no relevant court case to reference today, the system just looks the same to the users – and the prosecution and judges might have a hard time to understand that.
Essentially today’s TPB is similar to any other search engine. The court case in Sweden could just as well talk about Google.se as a domain name instead, since they also link to material that might breach copyright. But, actually, Google show you parts of that content, not just metadata about it.
Obviously this would be considered a ludicrous case and would be thrown out, but everything regarding TPB scared the shit out of the Swedish government because of pressure from the United States of America. Just look at how the first raid happened.
The Pirate Bay Domains Targeted in Legal Action
While it is technically possible to operate without one, domain names are considered vital for any mainstream website. Domains give a web service an identity and make them easy to find.
This is exactly what authorities in Sweden are now trying to deny The Pirate Bay.
Prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad, the man behind the now-famous operation to take the site down in December, is now spearheading the drive to shut down The Pirate Bay’s access to a pair of key domains. ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se are Ingblad’s targets, the former being the only domain currently being used by the site.
Originally filed at the District Court of Stockholm back in 2013, the motion targets Punkt SE, the organization responsible for Sweden’s top level .SE domain. Ingblad’s assertion is that since The Pirate Bay is acting illegally, domain names are necessarily part of that site’s ‘crimes’ and should be tackled like any other part of its infrastructure.
“A domain name is an aid for a site. When a site is used for criminal activities a domain is aiding crime,” Ingblad said.
While actions against domain names aren’t unprecedented in Sweden, this case is unique. Punkt SE (also referred to as the Internet Infrastructure Foundation) informs TorrentFreak that while two earlier actions targeted the owners of Swedish domain names, this is the first time that the prosecutor has targeted the .SE / IIS registrar directly.
File-Sharing Icon RapidShare Shuts Down
Founded in 2002, Swiss-based RapidShare was one of the first and most popular one-click file-hosting services on the Internet.
Like most sites of this nature, RapidShare was frequently used by people to share copyright-infringing material. It was a relationship that got the company into trouble on various occasions.
RapidShare fought many legal battles with entertainment companies seeking to hold the company liable for the actions of its users, and to top it off the site was called out by the U.S. Government as a “notorious market.”
Hoping to clear up its image the company made tremendous efforts to cooperate with copyright holders and limit copyright infringements. Among other things, the company adopted one of the most restrictive sharing policies while (re)branding itself as a personal cloud storage service.
The anti-piracy measures seemed to work, but as a result RapidShare’s visitor numbers plunged. The dwindling revenues eventually cost most of RapidShare’s employees their jobs.
Today marks the beginning of the final chapter in RapidShare’s controversial history. The company just announced that it will shut down at the end of March and is recommending that users store their files elsewhere.
Giganews Wins Again in Perfect 10 Copyright Battle
Adult magazine publisher Perfect 10 is one of the most litigious publishers in the online space.
The company has made a business out of suing Internet services for alleged copyright infringement and in recent years has targeted Google, Amazon, MasterCard and Visa, RapidShare and Depositfiles, and even hosting providers LeaseWeb and OVH.
While Perfect 10 has secured several private settlements, court victories in contested cases have not been forthcoming. The publisher had hoped of success in its current and prolonged legal battle with Usenet provider Giganews but things are not going well.
In a November 2014 ruling the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California found that Giganews was not liable for the infringing activities of its users. The provider now has further reason to celebrate thanks to a ruling from the same Court.
Rather than simply roll over under pressure from Perfect 10’s legal team, Giganews put up a vigorous and comprehensive defense to the publisher’s claims. During 2014 Giganews sought and obtained several discovery orders requiring the adult publisher to produce potentially huge amounts of data relating to its claim against the provider
(…)
Perfect 10 didn’t even produce evidence related to the infringement at the heart of the case.
EFF Files Petitions to Protect Your Rights to Tinker, Repair, and Remix
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed petitions with the U.S. Copyright Office seeking to keep users who remix DVD content or jailbreak their devices from losing their legal safe harbors and to establish new rights for those who need to circumvent “access control” or “digital rights management” (DRM) technologies for activities such as conducting security research, repairing cars, and resuscitating old video games. The petitions were submitted as part of the complex, triennial rulemaking process that determines exemptions from Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).
With the passage of the DMCA in 1998, Congress created “anti-circumvention” measures, ostensibly designed to prevent people from undermining DRM for purposes of copyright infringement. Recognizing that the law could impede lawful and important uses of copyrighted works, Congress included a provision in which the Copyright Office and Librarian of Congress are tasked with deciding which activities should and should not be exempted every three years through a complicated legal process.
The rulemaking process allows organizations like EFF to fight for the rights that digital businesses and consumers should already have. Even when petitions are successful, groups such as EFF still need to fight for each exemption to be reinstated each cycle.
Content Protection Company Makes Bogus ContentID Claims On Gameplay Videos; Sega Steps In To Clean The Mess Up
YouTube’s ContentID system is again being abused to take videos out of the control of the uploaders. The latest wave of bogus ContentID claims comes from (possibly) Japan’s eLicense, which is seemingly staking a claim to as many Sega-related videos as possible in order to siphon ad money away from the account holders. (via GamePolitics)
One YouTube account holder was hit with over 100 ContentID claims alone, while others have had some hits and some misses. Nowhere on eLicense’s site does it say the company is authorized to make ContentID claims on behalf of Sega. Sega America has since responded to the uproar, denying having anything to do with the hundreds of filed claims.
Regarding eLicense, this company is not working on behalf of SEGA in any capacity. We are issuing a Cease & Desist to eLicense and reaching out to YouTube directly to work on resolving this problem.
eLicense is acting independently and Sega intends to take the necessary action to prevent this from happening again.
Please help us in spreading the word wherever you see it online, feel free to link back to this post. Thanks all for reporting and documenting this issue!
KickassTorrents Taken Down By Domain Name Seizure
With millions of unique visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) is one the most used torrent sites on the Internet.
The site’s popularity has made it a prime target for copyright holders, many of whom would like to see the site taken offline.
To evade law enforcement and ease pressure from the entertainment industries, KAT has moved domain on a few occasions over the past several years. Most recently the site has been operating from the Kickass.so domain.
The Somalian .so TLD appeared to be a relatively safe haven, but today it’s apparent that this isn’t the case. About an hour ago the Kickass.so domain status listing was updated to “banned.”
Good Man Productions, Inc.: a zombie troll plaintiff
A copyright shakedown outfit lead by M. Keith Lipscomb and his German counterparts recently filed 99 Bittorent cases “on behalf” of Good Man Productions, Inc. Those lawsuits were filed in eight districts in November-December 2014, and the plaintiff alleged infringement of a direct-to-DVD movie Good Man featuring Steven Seagal.
On 1/14/2015 it came to our attention that querying Good Man Productions, Inc. information on the web portal of California Secretary of State revealed that this entity was dissolved. As soon as I reported it, the company suddenly re-appeared, albeit with a different entity number.
Naturally, we were skeptical about the fact that registering a new corporation with the same name would solve a potentially fatal problem.
Can a dissolved copyright holder corporation continue litigating as a plaintiff in infringement cases?
A CA corporation filed dozens of copyright infringement lawsuits in Nov-Dec 2014. On 12/22/2014 it was voluntarily dissolved. Nonetheless, the cases continue, and the courts were not notified.
Are any laws or regulations broken here?After those who actually steer the litigation made aware of publicity in this matter, they re-registered this corporation on 1/16/2015. The name and the agent remained the same, yet the entity number is different.
So the second question: did this move “cure” the issue? Is it a matter of interest for the tax authorities?
One of the answers from an experienced business attorney from California, Frank Chen, confirmed what we suspected (emphasis is mine):
Nope. I assume the corporation was voluntarily dissolved (as opposed to being suspended or involuntarily dissolved through a court decree). A suspended corporation can be revived by paying back taxes, penalties and interest, and filing back tax returns. However, a dissolved corporation cannot be revived. A dissolved corporation would no longer have standing to pursue a lawsuit. Re-registration creates a new corporation, but even if the name and agent for service of process are the same, the entity is not the same entity which was the plaintiff in the lawsuit. The move does not “cure” the issue.