Copyright & Law

Archive for the "Copyright & Law" Category

Nov16

Hollywood P2P Lawsuits Get Underway

Posted at 2:54 PM • No Comments

Little over a week ago rumours were circulating that the MPAA, which consists of seven Hollywood studios, were preparing lawsuits against file sharers of movies, in an action. Then ‘the Register’ claimed their source said that the MPAA were readying to file ‘John Doe’ suits against over 200 people seeking damages up to $150,000 for each movie placed online.

Today the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the first wave of legal actions against individuals they say are offering pirated copies of films using Internet based peer-to-peer file sharing programs. The film body also said it would soon make available a computer program that sniffs out movie and music files on a users computer as well as any installed file-sharing programs which would be available from their Respect Copyrights website, newly established to educate consumers about copyrights.

The trade group said it would also join with the Video Software Dealers Association to place educational materials in more than 10,000 video stores nationwide. Jason Schultz, an attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation said the MPAA messages seem contradictory: “They are placing these in locations where people are paying money for movies. They are sending the messages to people who are buying their products.”

MPAA Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman said in a statement. “The motion-picture industry must pursue legal proceedings against people who are stealing our movies on the Internet. The future of our industry, and of the hundreds of thousands of jobs it supports, must be protected from this kind of outright theft using all available means.”

In an earlier interview with USA Today (Nov 5) Glickman commented, ” We believe we’re losing $3.5 billion yearly. Someone sneaks into a theater with a camcorder, films a movie, puts it online for the world to see for free, and it gets duplicated into DVDs that are getting sold on street corners from New York and Los Angeles to China. If this is allowed to continue, it will sink our industry.”
In the same article it was pointed out by journalist Jefferson Graham that 2003′s box office figures were $9.5 billion, the second biggest in history.

Nov12

Music Activists Secure P2P

Posted at 3:38 PM • No Comments

Music activist website Downhill Battle are developing their own ‘RIAA-proof’ P2P file sharing client. The ad free Open Source app is based on the multi protocol instant messenger client Gaim and plugs into instant messengers like AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, or Jabber.

DB say on the projects homepage that, ” Making a program that only geeks can use won’t cut it. The goal, after all, is to keep people out of jail. What’s great about integrating filesharing into an IM client is that the interface will be familiar and non-threatening to everyone. And the interface itself explains the security advantages of the program in simple terms: you share with friends. ”

They go onto explain: “We propose an extension to the GAIM chat client that lets users do Gnutella style search & download filesharing, where search requests propagate out to trusted buddies, buddies of buddies, etc. This approach has several advantages. First, people will be more altruistic sharing with friends and won’t be as worried about RIAA/MPAA lawsuits. At the same time, because they can share with friends-of-friends, and friends-of-friends-of-friends, they’ll often be searching a very huge library. This software will be just as simple as an IM client, and it will be easy for people to invite friends (so it spreads virally).”

The software is still in development. Downhill Battle sees P2P/IM-integration with Gaim as a way to stop US P2P file sharers from landing in prison. Proposed legislation is looming in Congress in the US. ( the Intellectual Property Protection Act ) that could see major file sharers jailed if passed.

Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM and ICQ , MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise Messenger, and Zephyr networks.

Gaim users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

In the light of thousands of lawsuits by music industry watchdogs like the RIAA, file sharers are leaving high profile (and usually spyware laden) file sharing clients like KaZaa in their millions and looking at more ‘secure’ and trusted underground software networks like Mute, Ants and Waste which offer more secure, anonymous protocols.

Related Links

Downhill Battle Labs [DownhillBattle.org]
Downhillbattle.org Bounty For P2P Gaim Plug-in [Slashdot.org]
Block RIAA File Share Jail Plans [P2PNet.net]
Ants P2P A New Approach To File Sharing [Slyck.com]
Trusted Computing, Peer-To-Peer Distribution,and the Economics of Pirated Entertainment [Harvard.edu] 11pg PDF
Jail File Sharers Bill Passed [P2PNet]
Congress Moves To Criminalize P2P [Wired.com]
Instant Messenging Planet [InstantMessengingPlanet.com]
Instant Messenger [Wikipedia.org]

Jul3

Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment

Posted at 11:06 PM • No Comments

William W. Fisher III is the Hale and Dorr Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

Next month Fisher’s book “Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment” is published by Stanford University Press and promises to provide the first comprehensive, accessible overview of the conflict surrounding music distribution and the emergence of digital communications networks.

The book looks at how changes in the technology used to make and store audio and video recordings,in the last 15 years, combined with the communication revolution associated with the Internet, have generated an extraordinary array of new ways in which music and movies can be produced and distributed. Both the creators and the consumers of entertainment products stand to benefit enormously from the new systems.

And how we have failed thus far to avail ourselves of these opportunities. Instead, much energy has been devoted to interpreting or changing legal rules in hopes of defending older business models against the threats posed by the new technologies. These efforts to plug the multiplying holes in the legal dikes are failing and the entertainment industry has fallen into crisis.

The provocative book chronicles how we got into this mess and presents three alternative proposals each involving a combination of legal reforms and new business models for how we could get out of it.

One of those is ‘An Alternative Compensation System’, which takes up the whole of chapter 6 and is downloadable as a PDF preview, pre publication (August 9th).

Further Reading

Chapter 1:Promises To Keep:Introduction (PDF)
Alternative Compensation Systems [CrossCommons.org]
A Better Way Forward: Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing (PDF) [Electronic Frontier Foundation]
A Full, Fair And Feasible Solution To The Dilemma of Online Music Licensing [Quicktopic.com]
Private Copying, Levies and DRMs against the Background of the EU Copyright Framework [Europa]