Jonathan Bailey's List: Episode 108

• One of the groups of which Norstr�m is a signed up member is Svenska f�reningen f�r upphovsr�tt ('the Swedish Copyright Association'), where he is joined by Henrik Pont�n, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted, all of whom represented the entertainment industry in the case against file sharing site The Pirate Bay.
• The judge also sits on the board of Svenska f�reningen f�r industriellt r�ttsskydd (Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property), a group actively advocating for more stringent copyright laws.

• During the trial, prosecutor Håkan Roswall also pointed out that very little is needed to be sentenced for assistance. He referred, as precedent, to a case several decades ago when a person was sentenced for assisting in a case of mayhem, only for having held the culprit's coat.

• First, the court establishes--through the defendants' statements and e-mail correspondence, and through letters from copyright owners published on the Web site--that the defendants all knew about copyright-protected files being shared by Pirate Bay users.  

   Second, the court demonstrates that through the Piratebay.org site, they offered both a search function for torrents (small files pointing to the desired file), means for easily uploading and downloading the torrents, and a tracker--the server that keeps file sharers linked while they swap. 
• Relying on the defendants' statements, e-mail correspondence, and accounting records, the court shows that they have collective responsibility--all having been in the position to act, and all having known about the others' actions. This is also why all four received the same verdict, though they clearly held different roles. Warg and Neij are the co-founders of The Pirate Bay. Sunde is a programmer and a spokesman there, and Lundstr öm offered technical services to the site in 2005.

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• Under the law, a fund dedicated to session musicians would be set up and receive at least once a year 20 percent of the revenue gains from the copyright extension.

• All that is set to change as Norway’s Post and Telecommunications Regulator has just decided that if a court feels there is good enough reason, it can force ISPs to hand over the names and addresses of illicit file-sharers to copyright holders. This means that they can now be pursued through the courts, or more likely, through “pay up or else” type threats.

• However, there was a worrying development when one of the sysops of another torrent site, tbkresources.org - also hosted at Shinjiru, told TorrentFreak that a hard drive had been attached to their server and it was copying data for use in a copyright infringement case against them. Shinjiru confirmed the report.

• This case has been running since May 2006, when the Nine Network alleged that IceTV's electronic program guide infringed the copyright of Channel 9's television schedule. This court case came at a time soon after the Nine Network had acquired HWW, a company responsible for aggregating and providing television guide information to Foxtel as well as print and online media groups.

• The Appeals Court agreed with this analysis. "Plaintiffs also argue that [Parent company] iParadigms’ use of their works cannot be transformative because the archiving process does not add anything to the work—TurnItIn merely stores the  work unaltered and in its entirety. This argument is clearly  misguided," wrote the court.
• If you think this sounds a lot like the battle over search engine image thumbnails, you're not alone. The opinion noted the similarity to a case over Google Image Search, one in which judges had also concluded that Google's use of these copyrighted images was "transformative" even though they were not altered.

• The terms of the settlement between Google and The Authors Guild indemnifies Google should the copyright holder for an orphan work turn up and sue the search giant for infringement. The Internet Archive wants this same protection.
• Although the Internet Archive isn't seeking to derail the settlement, which is supposed to be finalized in June, the parties involved have informed the group that they oppose its attempts to intervene in the case. The Archive promises to abide by the court's May deadline for filing its objections, but believes strongly that it should be allowed to intervene as an affected party so as not to be put at a competitive disadvantage.

• (UPDATE: Founding Bloggers says it's considering doing just that.) Unless CNN sues within 10-14 business days, YouTube will re-post the original video. Will CNN sue? I can't say for sure, and I'm certainly not giving anyone legal advice here, but, given what I know now, I think it would be a terrible idea. First, as noted above, Founding Bloggers would have a very strong fair use defense.
• UPDATE: Blogger Patterico is on the case. He has uploaded a copy of the video to YouTube himself, is encouraging his readers to do the same, and says he may file a DMCA counternotice if CNN attempts to have his copy removed: "If CNN wants to sue me, we can make this a test case."