Australia

Aussie Government Brings Back Piracy Talks 114

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the flog-the-messenger dept.
joshgnosis writes "The Australian Attorney-General's department is set to hold a closed-door meeting with internet service providers, film lobby groups and consumer groups over proposals to reduce piracy on Thursday. The meetings were at a stalemate after sources said that neither the ISPs or the film groups could see eye to eye on the best proposal but the department confirmed that the meetings will go ahead and will this time include consumer advocate groups, who were previously excluded from the meetings."
Piracy

Rights Holders See Little Point Creating Legal Content Sources 417

Posted by timothy from the regulatory-capture-has-only-just-begun dept.
aesoteric writes "Six weeks after Hollywood lost a landmark internet piracy case in Australia, it appears the film studios have gone cold on the idea of helping develop legal avenues to access copyrighted content as a way to combat piracy. Instead, they've produced research to show people will continue pirating even if there are legitimate content sources available. The results appear to support the studios' policy position that legislation is a preferable way of dealing with the issue." The industry-controlled kill switch is a popular idea all over the world.
Piracy

Hollywood Agent Ari Emanuel Wants a Magic 'Stop Piracy' Button 269

Posted by Soulskill from the take-two-they're-small dept.
closer2it writes "At this week's All Things D conference, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher invited Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel. He spoke about things like TV not dying, cord-cutting being some kind of myth, and that googlers are smart guys and they should do something about the stealing of content. Josh Topolsky, from The Verge, apparently challenged him (video) on this point, asking: 'Aren't you saying that the road is responsible for the fact that someone drove on it before they robbed my house?' Emanuel didn't like this analogy, and even ended the reply asking Topolsky where he works. Mike Masnick also wrote a piece about the interview. I guess that if the Internet has enemies, I'd say Emanuel gives them a face."
Google

Cost of Pre-Screening All YouTube Content: US$37 Billion 345

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the assuming-screeners-are-omniscient dept.
Fluffeh writes "The folks that push 'Anti-Piracy' and 'Copying is Stealing' seem to often request that Google pre-screens content going up on YouTube and of course expect Google to cover the costs. No-one ever really asks the question how much it would cost, but some nicely laid out math by a curious mind points to a pretty hefty figure indeed. Starting with who to employ, their salary expectations and how many people it would take to cover the 72 hours of content uploaded every minute, the numbers start to get pretty large, pretty quickly. US$37 billion a year. Now compare that to Google's revenue for last year."
Piracy

Hundreds of IP Addresses Make Pirate Bay a Hard Target 224

Posted by timothy from the fleeting-contact-on-the-sonar dept.
jones_supa writes "Last week The Pirate Bay added a new IP address which allows users to circumvent the many court-ordered blockades against the site. While this proved to be quite effective, the Hollywood backed anti-piracy group BREIN has already been to court to demand a block against this new address. But that won't deter The Pirate Bay, who say they are fully prepared for an extended game of whac-a-mole using the hundreds of IP addresses they have available. Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site, and the end is still not in sight."
Google

Who Sends Google the Most Takedown Notices? Microsoft 148

Posted by Soulskill from the going-for-the-high-score dept.
nk497 writes "Google has released details on the copyright takedown notices it's received over the past year, and the most requests by far have been from Microsoft. Over the past year, Google has received DMCA takedown notices for 2,544,209 URLs over Microsoft-related piracy, with NBC and the RIAA ranking second and third. Many of the reports do not come directly from companies such as Microsoft, but via firms set up only to chase copyright issues. The most popular targets appear to be file-sharing sites. 'These days it's not unusual for us to receive more than 250,000 requests each week, which is more than what copyright owners asked us to remove in all of 2009,' said Fred von Lohmann, Google senior copyright counsel, adding it takes on average 11 hours for Google to take action."
Piracy

MPAA Agent Poses As Homebuyer To Catch Pirates 289

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the as-seen-on-tv dept.
bonch writes "The MPAA used an undercover agent posing as a potential homebuyer to gain access to the home of a British couple charged with running a streaming links site. UK authorities decided not to pursue the case, but the MPAA continued, focusing on a Boston programmer who worked on the site, leading to an unprecedented legal maneuver whereby U.S. charges were dropped in exchange for testimony in a UK fraud case."
Piracy

US ISPs Delay Rollout of "Six Strikes" Copyright Enforcement Framework 216

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the never-seems-like-a-good-launch-date dept.
zacharye writes with an excerpt from BGR: "The new 'six strikes' anti-piracy policy soon to be implemented by a number of major Internet service providers in the United States will reportedly stumble out of the gate. The policy, which is set to be adopted by Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and other ISPs, will see action taken against users caught downloading pirated files in six steps, ultimately resulting in bandwidth throttling or even service suspensions. The system responsible for managing the new policy may not be ready on schedule, however, and the targeted launch date of July 12th may slip back as a result..."
Piracy

BSA Claims Half of PC Users Are Pirates 585

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the gnu-is-a-crime dept.
judgecorp writes "Despite continued pressure on business users to buy legitimate software, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) reports that the campaign seems to be failing. Well over half (57%) of users surveyed in a global survey admit to using pirated software. That's a big increase from the same survey last year — when 43% admitted to using pirated software. The BSA surveyed 15,000 people in 33 countries."
Piracy

'First Base' In Greek Courts For ISP-Level Blocking 86

Posted by timothy from the thought-you-liked-it-that-way dept.
arisvega writes "At a first level (the lowest court level in the Greek judiciary system) an order has been issued (article in Greek, Google translation is fair enough) for a 'plan on behalf of Internet Service Providers regarding he implementation of technological measures to deny access to internet users for webpages through which illegal copies of copyrighted work are being distributed.' The order seems to be general and descriptive, and is a manifestation of the implementation process for an even more general and vague larger-scale EU directive, which is the common source that caused the rulings recently posted on slashdot regarding the UK, the Netherlands and Finland. This appears to be one of the reasons that prompted Anonymous to launch defacing attacks on Greek government websites some three months back."
Piracy

Finland: Open WiFi Access Point Owner Not Liable For Infringement 156

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the pirating-play-goers dept.
New submitter mjrauhal writes "In Finland, the operator of an open WiFi access point was found not guilty for copyright infringement allegedly committed over said access point. The operation of such access points would have become legally risky were this decided otherwise. Appeal by the Finnish Anti-Piracy Center is still possible for this district court ruling."
Censorship

Judge Who Ordered Pirate Bay Censorship Found To Be Corrupt 104

Posted by Soulskill from the conflict-of-interest dept.
TheGift73 writes "TorrentFreak reports that 'This week yet another court order was handed down in Europe with the aim of censoring The Pirate Bay. The ruling forbids the Dutch Pirate Party from not only running a direct proxy, but also telling people how to circumvent an earlier court ordered blockade. However, according to Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge, the judge in the case has a history of corruption relating to another file-sharing case he presided over in the Netherlands. The Court of The Hague in the Netherlands has been particularly busy this work with Pirate Bay-related cases.' Falkvinge wrote, '... not only was the plaintiff and judge personally and closely acquainted, the plaintiff in a controversial copyright monopoly case was running a commercial anti-piracy outfit together with the judge in the case. Money was involved. Commercial interest was involved. The judge was, as it appears from this brochure for the quite expensive course, getting money. Shortly after the case. In a directly related matter together with the plaintiff. That makes the judge not only corrupt, but textbook corrupt.'"
Government

DVDs, Blu-Rays To Show 20-Second Unskippable Govt. Warnings 587

Posted by samzenpus from the education-screen dept.
bonch writes "DVDs and Blu-Rays will begin displaying two unskippable anti-piracy screens, each 10 seconds long, shown back-to-back. Six studios have agreed to begin using the new notices. Of course, pirated versions won't contain these 20-second notices; however, an ICE spokesman says the intent isn't to deter piracy but to educate the public."
Piracy

The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent a Box Office Record 663

Posted by Soulskill from the you-wouldn't-download-an-angry-green-dude dept.
TheGift73 sends this excerpt from TorrentFreak: "Despite the widespread availability of pirated releases, The Avengers just scored a record-breaking $200 million opening weekend at the box office. While some are baffled to see that piracy failed to crush the movie's profits, it's really not that surprising. Claiming a camcorded copy of a movie seriously impacts box office attendance is the same as arguing that concert bootlegs stop people from seeing artists on stage. ... Of all the people who downloaded a pirate copy of the film about 20% came from the U.S. This means that roughly 100,000 Americans have downloaded a copy online through BitTorrent. Now, IF all these people bought a movie ticket instead then box office revenue would be just 0.5% higher. Not much of an impact, and even less when you consider that these 'pirates' do not all count as a lost sale."
Music

What Various Studies Really Reveal About File-Sharing 285

Posted by samzenpus from the have-some-media dept.
Dangerous_Minds writes "Drew Wilson of ZeroPaid has an interesting look at file-sharing. It all started with a review of a Phoenix study that was used to promote SOPA. Wilson says that the study was long on wild claims and short on fact. While most writers would simply criticize the study and move on, Wilson took it a step further and looked in to what file-sharing studies have really been saying throughout the years. What he found was an impressive 19 of 20 studies not getting any coverage. He launched a large series detailing what these studies have to say on file-sharing. The first study suggests that file-sharing litigation was a failure. The second study said that p2p has no effect on music sales. The third study found that the RIAA suppresses innovation. The fourth study says that the MPAA has simply been trying to preserve its oligopoly. The fifth study says that even when one uses the methodology of one download means one lost sale, the losses amount to less than $2 per album. The studies, so far, are being posted on a daily basis and are certainly worth the read."
Piracy

Pirate Party Gaining Strength In Germany 242

Posted by samzenpus from the patches-for-all dept.
bs0d3 writes "For the third consecutive regional election, The German Pirate Party has breached the five-percent mark needed to enter the state parliament, winning 8.2 percent of the vote in state of Schleswig-Holstein. From the article: 'The big winners on the night were the Pirates, an upstart party that has shaken up the staid world of German politics with a campaign based on more transparency in the political process and internet freedom.'"
Piracy

Feds Seized Website For a Year Without Piracy Proof 172

Posted by Soulskill from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.
bonch writes "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized a hip-hop website based on RIAA claims of copyright infringement for prerelease music tracks. They held it for a year before giving it back due to lack of evidence. Unsealed court records (PDF) show that the government was repeatedly given time extensions to build a case against Dajaz1.com, but the RIAA's evidence never came. The RIAA has declined to comment."
Piracy

Stop Being Poor: U.S. Piracy Watch List Hits a New Low With 2012 Report 310

Posted by Soulskill from the expectations-met dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Trade Representative released its annual Special 301 Report yesterday, unsurprisingly including Canada on the Priority Watch list. While inclusion on the list is designed to generate embarrassment on target countries, Michael Geist explains why this year's report should elicit outrage. Not only is the report lacking in objective analysis, it targets some of the world's poorest countries with no evidence of legal inadequacies and picks fights with any country that dare adopt a contrary view on intellectual property issues."
Piracy

UK ISPs Ordered To Block Pirate Bay 188

Posted by samzenpus from the do-not-surf-list dept.
Barence writes "Five of Britain's biggest ISPs have been ordered to block access to The Pirate Bay. Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media have been told to block access to the site. Britain's biggest ISP, BT, has been given a few further weeks to 'consider its position.' Music lobby group, the BPI, welcomed the move, saying music creators 'deserve to be paid for their work just like everyone else' and calling for those who use The Pirate Bay to illegally download content to 'explore the many digital music services operating ethically and legally in the UK.'"

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