European Parliament Rips Global IP Accord: Via Threat Level.

The European Parliament delivered a political blow to Hollywood and the Obama administration, voting Wednesday 663 to 13 in opposition to a proposed and secret intellectual property agreement being negotiated by the European Union, United States and a handful of others.

Wednesday’s developments concerning the Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement are substantial because the European Union’s 27 countries vastly outnumber the remaining countries negotiating the deal. They are Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States. Ambassador Ron Kirk, the top U.S. trade official, is spearheading the deal that began being crafted under the George W. Bush administration.

Kirk’s office declined comment.

To be sure, there is a dispute and heavy confusion concerning whether internet service providers under ACTA would be forced to punish customers deemed copyright scofflaws by reducing or eliminating service, according to a string of leaked documents. So Parliament members also agreed Wednesday to oppose the measure if it contains so-called “three strikes” or “graduated response” policies — regardless of whether that’s now in the text.

And because of the text’s secrecy, Parliament on Wednesday also demanded (.pdf) that the private agreement still under negotiation be publicly released. [ Read more ... ]

DMCA Muscle Strong-Arms DVD Copying: Via Threat Level.

Those awaiting a legitimate method to duplicate DVDs for personal use likely will have to wait even longer, perhaps forever, after RealNetworks tossed in the white towel and abandoned litigation toward that end.

RealNetworks spent almost two years in a legal battle with the Motion Picture Association of America, which sued the Seattle-based company to block the sale of its DVD-copying software and hardware –- generally known as RealDVD. The company said late Wednesday it was dropping its appeal of an August federal court decision that declared RealDVD an illegal violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

The act, which the Hollywood studios strongly lobbied for, prohibits the circumvention of encryption technology. DVDs are encrypted with what is known as the Content Scramble System, and DVD players must secure a license to play discs. RealDVD, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled, circumvents the CSS technology designed to prevent copying and is therefore a breach of the CSS license.

The litigation cost RealNetworks millions of dollars, including $4.5 million to reimburse the MPAA for its legal costs. The outcome cost Rob Glaser, RealNetworks’ CEO, his job. [ Read more ... ]

Judge Slams MPAA ‘Cartel’ Allegations: Via Threat Level.

A federal judge is slamming the door on RealNetworks’ argument the Hollywood studios are a “price-fixing cartel” illegally preventing the distribution of DVD-duplicating wares.

The Seattle-based electronics concern made the anti-trust argument in a failed bid to convince U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel in San Francisco to lift a distribution ban (.pdf) of its RealDVD software. It allows consumers to make copies of DVDs to hard drives.

The Motion Picture Association of America and others sued RealNetworks more than a year ago, claiming the software is illegal because it circumvents technology designed to prevent copying.

Patel’s decision means that, at least for the foreseeable future, it remains unlawful in the United States to market devices that copy DVDs. Despite a huge black market for them, the MPAA feared that, under a contrary ruling, it would lose control of the DVD as the music industry did the CD, which was not encrypted and protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. [ Read more ... ]

Senator Demands IP Treaty Details: Via Threat Level.

That a U.S. senator must ask a federal agency to share information regarding a proposed and “classified” international anti-counterfeiting accord the government has already disclosed is alarming. Especially when the info has been given to Hollywood, the recording industry, software makers and even some digital-rights groups.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) is demanding that U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk confirm leaks surrounding the unfinished Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, being negotiated largely between the European Union and United States. Among other things, Wyden wants to know if the deal creates international guidelines that mean consumers lose internet access if they are believed to be digital copyright scofflaws.

He also wants to know whether internet service providers could lose “safe harbor” protection for failing to police their customers’ digital content for copyright infringement violations. Such a move would heap copyright liability onto the ISP, and fundamentally alter U.S. copyright law.

What “legal incentives,” Wyden asked Kirk in a Wednesday letter, would “encourage Online Service Providers (OSPs) to cooperate with copyright owners to deter the unauthorized storage or transmission of copyrighted materials.”

The questions came weeks after leaked documents from the European Union suggested the United States was taking those positions on the accord’s draft internet section. [ Read more ... ]

Et Tu, U2? Bono, Net Surveillance and the Developing World: Via EFF.org Updates.

We feel compelled to add our comments about Bono's recent New York Times column, in which he appeared to express a strange hope that ISPs would start spying on their users in the name of protecting America's intellectual property. "We know," says Bono, "from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content." He continues by hoping that "movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product."

But Bono's new-found embrace of tracking Internet activity is in direct conflict with his own positions (expressed in the same article) about global freedom and equity. [ Read more ... ]

Most Pirated Movie of 2009 ... Makes Heaps of Money: Via EFF.org Updates.

According to TorrentFreak, last summer's Star Trek movie was the "most pirated movie of 2009." So it seems that Paramount Pictures was prescient when it gave testimony before the FCC that used Star Trek as an illustrative example of how "Internet piracy" is poised to devastate Hollywood and (though the nexus here is less than clear) undermine residential broadband in America.

Funny thing is, Star Trek is on course to make more than $100 million in profits. [ Read more ... ]

Torrent Search Engines Unlawful, U.S. Judge Says: Via Threat Level.

The operator of a popular BitTorrent search site said Monday he will likely challenge last week's landmark decision by a U.S. judge declaring such sites unlawful and no different from conventional peer-to-peer piracy services.

"We do think from our preliminary review there are a number of issues for appeal," said Ira Rothken, attorney for popular torrent search engine ISO Hunt, the defendant in the case.

The long-awaited decision, while not unexpected, was the first in the United States in which a federal judge found that BitTorrent search engines are an unlawful avenue (.pdf) to free movies, music, videogames and software. A contrary ruling likely would have sparked a gold rush of BitTorrent prospectors in the United States.

Targeted in the case was Gary Fung, a Canadian who operates ISO Hunt and other torrent search engines. Among other things, he argued that U.S. laws did not attach to him, and if they did, that his websites were protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. [ Read more ... ]

MPAA to FCC: critics of video blocking proposals are lying: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

The movie studios have a new Holy Grail, it seems: Federal Communications Commission permission to cable companies to shut down the analog streams on video-on-demand movie programming. As Ars readers know, we've been covering this issue for a while. But the Motion Picture Association of America's latest letter to the FCC pulls out all the stops, rhetoric-wise, calling criticisms of this scheme "complete and utter nonsense that only can be intended to stir up baseless fears among consumers that their equipment will suddenly go dark and be unusable for any purpose." [ Read more ... ]

It’s Alive! Hollywood Claims Pirate Bay Tracker Lives: Via Threat Level.

Did The Pirate Bay really shutter its tracker, as claimed on Tuesday?

The Motion Picture Association doesn’t think so.

Hollywood’s overseas lobbying organization claims OpenBitTorrent, billed as an independent “open tracker project,” was actually established by one of The Pirate Bay’s founders.

“OpenBitTorrent is used for file sharing, and we suspect that it is the Pirate Bay tracker with a new name. It is added by default on all of the torrent tracker files on Pirate Bay,” Hollywood attorney Monique Wadsted told Swedish media.

Wadsted, TorrentFreak notes, said the tracker’s domain was originally registered by Fredrik Neij, one of the four Pirate Bay co-founders.

On its website, OpenBitTorrent denies it’s The Pirate Bay’s tracker: [ Read more ... ]

MPAA Says Copyright-Treaty Critics Hate Hollywood: Via Threat Level.

If you don’t back a copyright treaty being negotiated in secret, you must want to destroy Hollywood, its blockbuster movies and all the jobs they create.

At least that’s the message from the Motion Picture Association of America.

It’s spelled out in a Thursday memo to the Senate Judiciary Committee, urging lawmakers to support the Obama administration’s efforts toward negotiating an intellectual property agreement with more than a dozen countries.

Dan Glickman, the MPAA’s chairman, informs lawmakers that millions of film-related jobs are in peril because of internet piracy. Simply put, those who don’t back the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement don’t support intellectual property rights, he wrote. [ Read more ... ]

Verizon to forward RIAA warning letters (but that's all): Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

If you're a copyright owner who has gone to the trouble and expense of tracking down online copyright infringers, don't send warning letters to Verizon without striking a deal first; Verizon simply chucks them in the bin.

Do a deal with the "big V" and Verizon is willing to forward warning letters on to its subscribers, but that's it. No customer information is exchanged and no sanctions are implemented—and Verizon has been handling the issue this way for years.

Read Original Article:(Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.)

DRM by any other name: The latest from Hollywood: Via Freedom to Tinker.

Sunday's New York Times had an article, Studios' Quest for Life After DVDs. To nobody's surprise, consumers want to have convenient access to "their" media, wherever they happen to be, without all the annoying restrictions that come into play when you add DRM to the picture. To many people's surprise, sales of DVDs (much less Blu-ray) are in trouble.

In the third quarter, studios’ home entertainment divisions generated about $4 billion, down 3.2 percent from a year ago, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, a trade consortium. But digital distribution contributed just $420 million, an increase of 18 percent.

Given that DVDs are really a luxury good (versus, say, food or electricity), the 3.2 percent drop seems like Hollywood is getting off easy. [ Read more ... ]

Hollywood Pressuring FCC on Selectable Output Control Again: Via EFF.org Updates.

Our friends at Public Knowledge have been doing a great job in Washington, D.C., fighting against the MPAA's efforts to selectively disable the high-definition analog (i.e., "component" video) outputs on your cable box. In essence, Hollywood is telling the FCC that it won't give Americans early access to blockbuster movies unless the FCC lets it kill your analog outputs.

Public Knowledge has an update today, letting us know that Hollywood is back at the FCC pushing for this anti-consumer, anti-innovation change in the FCC rules: [ Read more ... ]

Who, Why, and What the EFF? Ask the Electronic Frontier Foundation about Copyright, Innovation, and the NSA: Via Google Tech Talk.

Google Tech Talk
April 27, 2009

ABSTRACT

Who, Why, and What the EFF? Ask the Electronic Frontier Foundation about Copyright, Innovation, and the NSA

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is one of the leading online civil liberties groups. Join EFF attorneys as they deliver the the latest on the fight against warrantless wiretapping, promoting increased government transparency, and protecting your right to use the media you own. From the DMCA to DefCon, NSA to RIAA, they'll spell out what's happening where law, tech, and civil liberties collide.

Panelists are Fred von Lohmann, Marcia Hofmann, and Kurt Opsahl. [ Read more ... ]

Movie studios again demand HDTV disabling powers from FCC: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

Hollywood's bid to force a yet-to-be-agreed-upon number of households to buy new home theater gear is back in business. The Motion Picture Association of America has once again asked the Federal Communications Commission for the right to selectively control output streams to the TV entertainment systems of consumers. "The pro-consumer purpose" (!) request "is to enable movie studios to offer millions of Americans in-home access to high-value, high definition video content," three MPAA biggies explained during a meeting they held with seven FCC Media Bureau staffers last Thursday. [ Read more ... ]

Another Court Deals Major Blow to DVD Copying: Via Threat Level.

A California appeals court on Wednesday overturned a lower court ruling that had paved the way for a $10,000 DVD copying system called Kaleidescape and other products from the company with the same name.

The 6th District Court of Appeal in San Jose, California, was the second court in two days to rule that companies are bound (.pdf) by the entire Content Scramble System licensing regime, which prevents duplicating DVDs.

A San Francisco federal judge ruled late Tuesday that RealNetworks’ DVD-copying software was a breach of the Content Scramble System license, which is required for DVDs and computers to play DVDs. The license allows DVD players to descramble the encrypted code on a DVD, but the license prohibits the duplication of a DVD. Both RealNetworks and Kaleidescape claimed a loophole in the CSS license allowed the copying of DVDs. [ Read more ... ]

Big Content: ludicrous to expect DRMed music to work forever: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

When Wal-Mart announced in 2008 that it was pulling down the DRM servers behind its (nearly unused) online music store, the Internet suffered a collective aneurysm of outrage, eventually forcing the retail giant to run the servers for another year. Buying DRMed content, then having that content neutered a few months later, seemed to most consumers not to be fair. [ Read more ... ]

Obama Urges Justices to Avoid ‘Cablevision’ Copyright Case: Via Threat Level.

The Obama administration is urging the Supreme Court to let stand a copyright case testing whether cable operators may permit customers to store television programming on company servers to be viewed at a later time.

The issue concerns an August ruling by a federal appeals court, which lifted an injunction against Cablevision Systems blocking it from offering customers a recording service that stores programming on the cable company’s own servers instead of on viewers’ in-house playback devices.

Hollywood and television programmers maintain Cablevision’s service directly infringes their exclusive rights to both reproduce and publicly perform their copyrighted works. On appeal, they told the high court that the copyright case was the most important lawsuit following the justices’ 1984 ruling declaring American consumers had a fair use right to use videocassette machines and record copyrighted movies at home. [ Read more ... ]

Reminder from the MPAA: DRM trumps your fair use rights: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

Fair use has nothing to do with—and can't be used to defend—DRM circumvention, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. The arguments were made during the RealDVD hearing in San Francisco this week, with the MPAA insisting that the DVD copying case isn't about fair use at all, but violations of the DMCA's anticircumvention rules. The two concepts aren't directly related when it comes to US Copyright Law, and the MPAA wants the court to agree that DMCA claims trump all when it comes to copying content.

Read Original Article:(Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.)

RealDVD Case: Home Copying Hangs in the Balance: Via Threat Level.

SAN FRANCISCO -– Six days of hearings spanning a month ended here Thursday with no decision on whether RealNetworks may resume marketing its DVD copying software.

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel is weighing the movie industry’s lawsuit against the Seattle-based company over its RealDVD software, which the judge ordered removed from the market last year pending the outcome of the case.

The lawsuit represents Hollywood’s worries that RealDVD and other fledgling DVD-copying services might ruin the market for DVDs. The U.S. courts have not squarely ruled on whether it is legal to copy an encrypted DVD for personal use.

After hours of closing arguments here, Patel did not indicate when or how she would rule. Still, Patel expressed some concern that the studios’ rights might be violated by the software, because “there’s nothing preventing you from giving your DVD to somebody else” for copying. [ Read more ... ]

Do We Want ISP's Penalizing Music Fans?: Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Noted singer songwriter Billy Bragg has written an excellent column in The Guardian, coming out against the pro-RIAA '3-strikes' legislation the big 4 record labels are trying to push through. In the article, entitled 'Do we want ISP's penalizing our fans?', Bragg writes: [ Read more ... ]

Real: studios, DVD-CCA "illegal cartel" squeeze out fair use: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

RealNetworks has filed legal counterclaims against the DVD Copy Control Association and all the major movie studios, claiming that the studios conspired to eliminate competition in the market for fair use copies of DVDs. The company says that the studios abused their power by refusing to grant licenses to Real unless the whole group was involved, and wants the court to force them to drop their lawsuit against Real. [ Read more ... ]

RealNetworks: MPAA Is ‘Price-Fixing Cartel’: Via Threat Level.

RealNetworks is upping the ante in litigation seeking to prevent it from distributing DVD-copying software. The company argues the Hollywood studios are a “price-fixing cartel” that have no right to prevent consumers from duplicating the movie discs.

The Seattle-based electronics concern is making the argument in a bid to convince a federal judge to lift the distribution ban of its RealDVD software (.pdf) that allows consumers to make copies of the discs to their computer hard drives. The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood studios, and others, sued RealNetworks last year, claiming the software is illegal because it circumvents technology designed to prevent copying.

But RealNetworks, in counterclaims filed late Wednesday, maintains that the studios, as a collective, have illegally crafted a licensing scheme called the Content Scramble System licensing agreement that prevents the fair-use copying of DVDs. It is the first time the studios, in conjunction with the DVD Copy Control Association (which licenses the CSS code) have been accused of anti-trust practices in a lawsuit. [ Read more ... ]

LA Times on Latest Congressional P2P Witch Hunt: Via EFF.org Updates.

The L.A. Times Technology Blog hits the nail on the head, responding to news that the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has sent out letters asking for help investigating security breaches caused when government employees and contractors who use P2P software accidentally share information on networks like Lime Wire. [ Read more ... ]

It’s Time to Legalize Personal-Use DVD Copying: Via Threat Level.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge here Thursday or soon thereafter is likely to conclude RealNetworks’ DVD-copying software is unlawful, and therefore should be permanently barred from distribution.

That’s the correct interpretation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Yet we think it’s offensive that the 1998 act produces the absurd result that consumers are considered hackers and copyright scofflaws just for duplicating DVDs for personal use.

By suing RealNetworks over the RealDVD-copying software, the Hollywood studios fear losing control of the DVD like the music industry did with the CD.

It’s OK to copy music from CDs, for example, and place it in an iPod. Yet, it’s illegal to do the same with a DVD. When it comes to the DVD, there’s not even a question of fair use. [ Read more ... ]