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04 Apr 09

MPAA President to be Thrown Out | TorrentFreak

  • Of course, there is also precedent for the head of the MPAA being let go after embarrassing or damaging public relations activities. Glickman’s predecessor, Valenti, retired not long after a showdown between the MPAA and studios over an MPAA screener ban in late 2003. In that case the MPAA backed down after a court injunction went against them, and before a massively damaging antitrust lawsuit could be brought.

Harvard P2P lawyer: file-swapping is fair use—no, really! - Ars Technica

  • This week, Professor Nesson published to his blog a batch of private e-mail correspondence about his strategy in the case. In the e-mails, he lays out his plan of attack. "Fair use" is not so much "defined" in US copyright law as it "bounded" by a set of four questions that can be applied to any particular use of copyrighted material to see if the use is allowed without permission. The questions ask whether the new use is "transformative," whether it uses a part of the original work or the whole thing, what the effect of the use is on the future market for the original, and what sort of work the original piece was (published or unpublished? factual biography or fictional novel?).
  • In the attempt to codify this notion of "fairness" into a principle, Nesson comes up with this: "Seems to me to be an understandable principle that it's okay to consume and share nonrivalrous good which are available on the net for free."
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France to Block The Pirate Bay, Disconnect File-Sharers | TorrentFreak

  • In order to clamp down on piracy the French have passed a new law requiring Internet service providers to cut off Internet access for persistent offenders. Under the new legislation ISPs have to warn alleged copyright infringers twice, and if they they ignore these warnings their Internet access is terminated for up to a year.
  • One of the biggest problems with the new law is that copyright infringers will be identified only by an IP-address, which will undoubtedly lead to many false accusations. Those who want to prove their innocence have only one option, namely, to install a spyware application that will monitor their every move on the Internet and report it back to the authorities. Hardly practical.
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02 Apr 09

iPods, First Sale, President Obama, and the Queen of England | Electronic Frontier Foundation

  • First, let's imagine that the President (or his staff) bought the 40 show tunes from the iTunes music store. Do you "own" the music that you buy from iTunes? The nearly 9,000 words of legalese to which you agree before buying don't answer that question (an oversight? I doubt it). Copyright owners have consistently argued in court that many digital products (even physical "promo" CDs!) are "licensed," not "owned," and therefore you're not entitled to resell them or give them away.
  • Second, even if the first sale doctrine applies to iTunes downloads, what about the additional copies made on the iPod? iTunes does not download directly to an iPod. So President Obama's staff made an additional copy onto the Queen's intended iPod. How are those copies excused?
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BBC NEWS | Technology | Piracy law cuts internet traffic

  • According to figures released by the government statistics agency - Statistics Sweden - 8% of the entire population use peer-to-peer sharing.
  • Speaking to the BBC, Christian Engstrom, vice-chairman of the Swedish Pirate Party - said the drop in traffic was a direct result of the new law, but that it would only be a temporary fall.
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YouTube shuts out German users in dispute over fees - Feature : Internet Technology

  • It was hitting back against a demand from Gema, a German public agency that collects a performing-right fees, for 1 euro cent per video download. Gema, which has annual turnover of 850 million euros (1.13 billion dollars) represents writers and music publishers
  • A YouTube executive, Patrick Walker, said Gema's 1-cent demand was out of proportion to what the German agency charged compact disc vendors, given that users often watched videos many times over.

Hulu begins encrypting HTML content to thwart non-browser apps

  • The Boxee folks just pinged us to say what several commenters have also noted: the current Mac alpha now features an XUL-based Hulu component that works no differently than a browser, and the Windows and Linux versions will be updated shortly. We'll see how Hulu responds -- for now we're sticking by our prediction that this all ends with someone building a full-on browser into one of these apps.

The Open Rights Group : Blog Archive » EU governments vote against copyright extension in Brussels

  • In a surprise move the UK government joined others in a blocking minority, rejecting a compromise deal that would have delivered minimal benefits to performers. It now seems increasingly unlikely that a deal on copyright extension will be reached by EU countries before the EU Parliament first reading plenary vote takes place.
  • The copyright term extension proposal is a bad deal for European consumers, musicians and follow-on innovators. Full plenary vote will take place soon in the European parliament, so contact your MEPs and let your government know copyright term extension is the wrong move.
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