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Entertainment Industry Leaned On Los Angeles Politicos to Declare Piracy a 'Public Nuisance' - Via Threat Level:
A Los Angeles County ordinance adopted last week giving authorities the legal muscle to shutter property used to produce counterfeit DVDs and CDs was the result of intense pressure from Hollywood and the recording industry.
Additionally, the so-called nuisance abatement ordinance was based, in part, on exaggerated piracy figures provided by the entertainment industry, which also gave the measure's key political backer thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, according to an examination by THREAT LEVEL.
The ordinance, similar to a New York City regulation, expands the definition of a nuisance property from those infested with drugs, gangs, gambling and prostitution to include a property producing, selling or storing counterfeited content. The entertainment industry is calling it an important milestone in combating piracy, though the measure's phrasing is focused primarily on professional pirates who produce DVDs and CDs that resemble authentic disks, and not downloaders. read more »
NBC-Vista copy-protection snafu reminds us why DRM stinks - Via Ars Technica :
Handfuls of Windows Vista Media Center users found themselves blocked from making recordings of their favorite TV shows this week when a broadcast flag triggered the software's built-in copy protection measures. The flag affected users trying to record prime-time NBC shows on Monday evening, using both over-the-air broadcasts and cable. Although the problem is being "looked into" by both NBC and Microsoft, the incident serves as another reminder that DRM gives content providers full control, even if by accident.
Vista MCE users began reporting problems on Monday evening, starting with posts on the popular DVR-enthusiast forum on The Green Button. While trying to record shows like American Gladiator and Medium, Vista users were presented with an error that read, "Recording cancelled. [TV show] cannot be recorded. Restrictions set by the broadcaster and/or originator of the content prohibit recording of this program." The Green Button user justinjas posted a screenshot of the error on his blog. read more »
NBC Activates Broadcast Flag - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online:
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "NBC activated the 'broadcast flag' on a number of shows this week, ranging from American Gladiator to Medium, which prevented compliant programs like Windows Media Center from recording them. The matter is being 'looked into,' but that doesn't tell us whether it was an accident or a ploy to see how outraged viewers would be at being stripped of the time-shifting rights they've enjoyed ever since Sony v. Universal. Just in case it's the latter, it wouldn't hurt to let them know what you think."
Arlen Specter Demanding Probe Of 'Spygate' - Via Threat Level:
Arlen Specter, the Republican leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Wednesday demanded an independent investigation into "Spygate."
The announcement came three years after it was first disclosed President Bush had authorized a secret electronic eavesdropping program on Americans without warrants in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks.
But Specter wasn't referring to that.
Instead, the Pennsylvania senator is demanding an inquiry into the New England Patriots' secret videotaping of opposing NFL coaches' signals on the sidelines -- an affair sports writers have dubbed "Spygate."
We are not making this up. Specter said such behavior, a violation of NFL rules, is damaging to the sport. Call it Specter's own Patriot Act. read more »
Sony BMG Sends YouTube Ads Instead of Takedown - Via Wendy's Blog: Legal Tags:
As reported on Valleywag and picked up by Slashdot, Sony BMG has been testing an alternative to copyright takedowns of unauthorized music videos on YouTube: inserting a link to the band’s official page instead.
An eagle-eyed Valleywag tipster with a taste for Modest Mouse spotted an interesting new feature on YouTube. Uploads of music videos from the band by non-official sources now carry a link reading “Contains content from Sony BMG,” which leads users to the official Modest Mouse page on the site.
Commenter Mr. E discovers that the “claim” link is added automatically, by Google’s YouTube Video ID Tool, when a matching video is spotted on upload. read more »
It has nothing to do with privacy, but I wanted to let my readers know about a fundraising event from an organization I work with. If you are in NYC on Wednesday May 21, 2008 why not pay us a visit. Tickets available online.
EVENT HIGHLIGHTS ( www.SunflowerChildren.org & www.Maybach.org )
Sunflower Children Funds, JPMorgan and the Maybach Family Foundation host an evening of fashion, fun and philanthropy for JPMorgan Investment Banking, Private Banking employees and Sunflower-Maybach key supporters amongst the NY philanthropic and fashion communities.
Proceeds will primarily benefit Casita de Belen, a Sunflower-sponsored home for street children in Colombia, as well as Sunflower Children projects in Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua & Peru. read more »
Congress Considers Reform On Orphaned Works - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online:
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate to liberalize copyright law in the case of orphaned works. The almost-identical bills would limit the penalties for infringement in cases where the copyright holder could no longer be identified. The idea is that one could declare their intent to use the work with the Copyright Office and if the copyright holder didn't care to respond, they would only be able to get 'reasonable compensation' instead of excessive statutory penalties. Public Knowledge has more details on the bills."
Voluntary Collective Licensing and Extortion - Via Freedom to Tinker:
Reihan Salam has a new piece at Slate about voluntary collective licensing of music (which was also the topic of an online symposium organized by our center at Princeton). I’m generally a fan of Reihan’s work, but this time I think he got it wrong. His piece starts like this:
What would you do if a bully—let’s call him “Joey Giggles”—kept snatching your ice-cream cone? OK, now what if Joey Giggles then told you, “If you pay me five bucks a month, I’ll stop snatching your ice cream.” Depending on how much you hate getting beaten up, and how much you love ice-cream cones, you might decide that caving in is the way to go. This is what’s called a protection racket. It’s also potentially the new model for how we’ll buy and listen to music.
[…]
Now Big Music is mulling the Joey Giggles approach. Warner Music Group is trying to rally the rest of the industry behind a plan to charge Internet service providers $5 per customer per month, an amount that would be added to your Internet bill. In exchange, music lovers would get all the online tunes they want, meaning that anyone who spends more than $60 a year on music will come out way ahead. Download whatever you want and pay nothing! No more DRM! Swap files to your heart’s content—we promise, we won’t sue you (or snatch your ice-cream cone)!
This idea, that collective licenses amount to extortion — pay us or we’ll sue you — is often heard, but I don’t think it’s a valid criticism of collective licenses. read more »
London Lawyers Demand £600 For One Game - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online:
Barence writes "A PC Pro reader has received a demand for a £600 out-of-court settlement from lawyers claiming to have forensic evidence that he illegally downloaded a PC game on BitTorrent. The law firm, Davenport Lyons, is acting on the behalf of German games distributor Zuxxez, creator of the game in question, Two Worlds. The PC Pro reader was given no prior warning to stop file sharing, unlike the usual 'three strikes and you're out' approach adopted by the music industry. The reader says, 'To add insult to injury it [Davenport Lyons] didn't pay enough postage on the letter and I had to collect it from the sorting office at a cost of £1.30. This also used up most of the two weeks that it allowed for a response.'"
Knitwit BBC Goes After Dr Who Fans - Via EFF: Deep Links:
Here's a fascinating UK legal analysis of an incident we see occurring all over the world: an over-eager rightsholder undermining Internet goodwill by pursuing their own fans for supposed IP infringements.
Andre Guadamuz, is a lecturer at the Edinburgh University school of law, and organizes the fantastic British conference on "geek law", Gikii. He was recently put in contact by the Open Rights Group with Mazzmatazz, a Dr Who fansite which posts knitting patterns of the current batch of Dr Who monsters, including those obedient servants of man, the Ood (see above). read more »
Do You Own Your Software? WoW Glider Case Not Just About Getting to Level 70. - Via EFF: Deep Links:
Unbeknownst to most software users, a lawsuit now at a critical stage could drastically expand the ability of software vendors to restrict how their customers can use their software.
Blizzard Entertainment, the company that makes the hugely popular massive multi-player online role-playing game World of Warcraft, sued Michael Donnelly, the developer of Glider, a program that helps WoW users raise their character level to 70 by “playing” for the user while the user goes to get a cup of coffee, read the paper, etc. The WoW licensing agreement ostensibly forbids using programs like Glider. Blizzard says that Donnelly illegally interfered with that agreement by selling Glider and, therefore, encouraging users to breach the license agreement by using the program. read more »
House Passes Controversial PRO IP Act - Via EFF: Deep Links:
Today, the House passed the controversial PRO IP Act (H.R. 4279) 410 to 11, with 12 representatives not voting.
While Public Knowledge and other groups successfully persuaded the House to remove the most damaging provision in the bill (seemingly written solely to increase damages in the RIAA's file-sharing lawsuit campaign), the bill would nonetheless significantly expand federal enforcement of copyright law. read more »
DRM Not Dead, Just Temporarily Indisposed, Says RIAA Tech Head - Via Freedom to Tinker:
The RIAA’s head technology guy says that the move away from DRM (anti-copying) technology by record labels is just a phase, according to a Greg Sandoval story at News.com:
“(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM,” said David Hughes, who heads up the RIAA’s technology unit, during a panel discussion at the Digital Hollywood conference. “Any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead.”
…
Last January, when Sony BMG became the last major recording company to sell DRM-free tracks at Amazon, plenty of observers considered the technology buried. Since then, a growing number of online stores have begun offering at least some open MP3s, including Walmart.com, Zune’s Marketplace, Amazon, as well as iTunes.
Not so fast, said Hughes, who predicted that DRM would reemerge in a big way. “I think there is going to be a shift,” he told the audience. “I think there will be a movement towards subscription services, and (that) will eventually mean the return of DRM.”
The imminent success of subscription services with DRM is more or less what the record industry was predicting several years ago. read more »
Chief RIAA Litigator Named Colorado Judge -- UPDATE - Via Threat Level:
Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter is appointing the Recording Industry Association of America's top litigator to the Colorado Court of Appeals.
Richard Gabriel, who prosecuted the Jammie Thomas case, is a partner in the Colorado office of Holme Roberts & Owens. Gabriel, who assumes the $124,000 annual post July 1, was a convincing litigator in the Thomas case, the nation's first RIAA lawsuit against an individual for file-sharing that went to trial. read more »
Isohunt Founder at Center of U.S. Torrent-Tracking Legal Battle - Via Threat Level:
Gary Fung remembers years ago when the first computer he operated was a Pentium 90.
His programming skills have grown considerably since that first computer and his mastery of Pascal. Combined with his business acumen, the 25-year-old Fung now heads the popular BitTorrent search engine Isohunt and two tracking sites, Podtropolis and Torrentbox.
The Motion Picture Association of America claims in a lawsuit that Fung is a copyright scofflaw of the highest order -- facilitating the theft of millions of its copyrighted works hosted in tiny pieces resting on servers and individuals' computers worldwide. read more »
"Something to Hide" in a Surveillance Society - Via ACLU Blog:
Last Thursday, we teamed up with PEN American Center once again during its PEN World Voices Festival to host "Something to Hide: Writers and Artists Against the Surveillance State," a special evening designed to provoke reflection on controversial post-9/11 government surveillance programs in the U.S. The evening featured dramatic readings from writers György Dragomán, Wally Shawn, Deborah Eisenberg, Ingo Schulze, Péter Esterházy; poetry from Chenjerai Hove and Irakli Kakabadze; personal reflections from visual artists Jenny Marketou and Hasan Elahi; and opening remarks from PEN President Francine Prose and ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero.
While your gut might not be saying, “Gee that sounds like fun,” important stories were told and a really good time was had and by all, both onstage and off. read more »
MSN Music Debacle Highlights EULA Dangers - Via EFF: Deep Links:
When Microsoft announced that it will no longer support former MSN Music customers who want to play their DRM disabled music on new computers, DRM-hating consumer advocates justifiably cried out, “I told you so!” But this debacle is not just another example of the dangers of DRM: its also a reminder of the danger of overreaching end user license agreements, or EULAs
Just as DRM allows unprecedented corporate control over music and movies, the EULAs that Microsoft and other content vendors force users to click through before downloading songs, shows or films help enforce and expand that control. For example, EULAs usually claim that whatever happens, you can't sue the company--even for problems that are entirely of the company’s own making. And EULAs are often used to try to limit a company’s obligation to live up to its apparent promises. read more »
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