New study says online piracy isn’t hurting entertainment industry

By Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo News October 3, 2013

For years, the entertainment industry has argued that online piracy has devastated business for movies, music and gaming.

But a new policy brief from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) says that not only does piracy not hurt the creative industry but it is actually helping.

Millions of people across the globe illegally access copyrighted material on a daily basis. The most common method of digital pirating is through torrent sites, which let an individual download and upload content through a peer-to-peer file-sharing system.

Individuals in the U.S. who are found guilty of violating digital piracy laws can face severe legal penalties, including a felony record, five years in prison and $250,000 in penalties.

In the briefing, authors Bart Cammaerts, Robin Mansell and Bingchun Meng call on governments to re-evaluate their antipiracy laws to include data from studies beyond those directly sponsored by the entertainment industry itself.

“Contrary to the industry claims, the music industry is not in terminal decline, but still holding ground and showing healthy profits. Revenues from digital sales, subscription services, streaming and live performances compensate for the decline in revenues from the sale of CDs or records,” Cammaerts said in report carried by the site TorrrentFreak.

In a separate story, TorrentFreak says that independent data actually suggests that those who pirate content are also more likely to spend their money on film, music and gaming content.

A June 2013 study found that roughly 45 percent of all Americans pirate copyrighted content on a regular basis, including 70 percent of those under 30.

In the LSE report’s key messages, the authors say that evidence does not back up claims that individual cases of copyright infringement are affecting entertainment industry revenues, that antipiracy laws around the world are not achieving their desired impacts and that governments should update their policies to include more evidence from a diverse set of sources.

“Despite the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) claim that online piracy is devastating the movie industry, Hollywood achieved record-breaking global box office revenues of $35 billion in 2012, a 6% increase over 2011,” the report states.

And while music sales have faced steeper declines in recent years, the authors say those numbers have largely been balanced out by increased sales in live performance and other outlets.

“The music industry may be stagnating, but the drastic decline in revenues warned of by the lobby associations of record labels is not in evidence,” the authors write.

Interestingly, in the same Columbia University study, which found that nearly half of all U.S. Internet users pirate copyrighted material, nearly half of those individuals say they would willingly pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to multimedia content.

And the LSE study authors say that is one possible solution for the entertainment industry going forward as a way to bridge the gap between content providers and consumers.

“Within the creative industries there is a variety of views on the best way to benefit from online sharing practices, and how to innovate to generate revenue streams in ways that do not fit within the existing copyright enforcement regime,” the authors conclude.

“When both [the creative industries and citizens] can exploit the full potential of the Internet, this will maximize innovative content creation for the benefit of all stakeholders.”

RIAA chief: ISPs to start policing copyright by July 1

Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon are among the ISPs preparing to implement a graduated response to piracy by July, says the music industry's chief lobbyist.
by Greg Sandoval March 14, 2012, CNET

NEW YORK--The country's largest Internet service providers haven't given up on the idea of becoming copyright cops.

Last July, Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable and other bandwidth providers announced that they had agreed to adopt policies designed to discourage customers from illegally downloading music, movies and software. Since then, the ISPs have been very quiet about their antipiracy measures.

But during a panel discussion before a gathering of U.S. publishers in New York today, Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, said most of the participating ISPs are on track to begin implementing the program by July 1.

Supporters say this could become the most effective antipiracy program ever. Since ISPs are the Internet's gatekeepers, the theory is that network providers are in the best position to fight illegal file sharing. CNET broke the news last June that the RIAA and counterparts at the trade group for the big film studios, had managed to get the deal through--with the help of the White House.

Sherman told attendees of the Association of American Publishers' annual meeting that planners had always said that setting up an antipiracy program like this could take a year. He told CNET following his panel that the process isn't as easy as turning on a switch.

"Each ISP has to develop their infrastructure for automating the system," Sherman said. They need this "for establishing the database so they can keep track of repeat infringers, so they know that this is the first notice or the third notice. Every ISP has to do it differently depending on the architecture of its particular network. Some are nearing completion and others are a little further from completion."

The program, commonly referred to as "graduated response," requires that ISPs send out one or two educational notices to those customers who are accused of downloading copyrighted content illegally. If the customer doesn't stop, the ISP is then asked to send out "confirmation notices" asking that they confirm they have received notice.

At that time, the accused customers will also be informed of the risks they incur if they don't stop pirating material. If the customer is flagged for pirating again, the ISP can then ratchet up the pressure. Participating ISPs can choose from a list of penalties, or what the RIAA calls "mitigation measures," which include throttling down the customer's connection speed and suspending Web access until the subscriber agrees to stop pirating.

The ISPs can waive the mitigation measure if they choose and not one of the service providers has agreed to permanently terminate service.

The partnership with the major bandwidth providers was years in the making and the deal pumped lots of confidence into the entertainment sector. After the White House and state and federal lawmakers showed support for the deal, leaders at the RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) believed they had the momentum to get antipiracy legislation passed in Congress.

They were wrong of course. The Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act were run off the rails mostly by the tech sector. It will be interesting to see how the tech sector reacts once accused Internet pirates begin having their Web access suspended.

Author illustrates why copyright math is bogus

By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story
Friday, March 16, 2012

Giving a recent TED Talk, author Rob Reid, creator of the online music subscription service Rhapsody, illustrated for the audience exactly why so-called “copyright math” is almost completely bogus.

“Copyright math” is a term used for the extrapolations published by groups like the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), or the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which lobby Washington for tougher laws on copyright infringement by claiming exorbitant financial and job losses due to online piracy.

Of course, it’s hard to claim those losses when so many executives are seeing their largest salaries ever, with box office profits continually spiraling higher.

Yet in 1999, the content industries got together to lobby for an “improvement” to copyright law that put a $150,000 price tag on every single act of infringement, and Washington granted their wish.

“Now when this law first passed, the world’s hottest MP3 player could hold just 10 songs, and it was a big Christmas hit — because what little hoodlum wouldn’t want a million and a half bucks-worth of stolen goods in his pocket?” Reid asked, using copyright math to illustrate the absurdity of their claims.

“These days, an iPod classic can hold 40,000 songs… Which is to say, eight billion dollars worth of stolen media, or about 75,000 jobs,” he deadpanned. “Now you might find copyright math strange, but that’s because it’s a field that’s best left to experts.”

Both the MPAA and the RIAA have weighed in heavily on other nations’ copyright laws in recent years, facilitated by the Obama Administration. They also recently brokered a deal with all the major Internet providers to set up network operators as the de facto copyright police, who will begin spying on customers to detect piracy later this year.

This video is from TED Talks, published Thursday, March 15, 2012.

Anonymous downs government, music industry sites in largest attack ever

Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.
RT: 20 January, 2012


In response to today’s federal raid on the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers with the online collective Anonymous have broken the websites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America and Warner Music Group.

“It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.gov,” Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon.

Only hours before the DoJ and Universal sites went down, news broke that Megaupload, a massive file sharing site with a reported 50 million daily users, was taken down by federal agents. Four people linked to Megaupload were arrested in New Zealand and an international crackdown led agents to serving at least 20 search warrants across the globe.

The latest of sites to fall is FBI.gov, which finally broke at around 7:40 pm EST Thursday evening.

Less than an hour after the DoJ and Universal sites came down, the website for the RIAA, or Recording Industry Association of America, went offline as well. Shortly before 6 p.m EST, the government's Copyright.gov site went down as well. Thirty minutes later came the site for BMI, or Broadcast Music, Inc, the licensing organization that represents some of the biggest names in music.

Also on Thursday, MPAA.org returned an error as Anonymous hacktivists managed to bring down the website for the Motion Picture Association of America. The group, headed by former senator Chris Dodd, is an adamant supporter of both PIPA and SOPA legislation.

Universal Music Group, or UMG, is the largest record company in the United States and under its umbrella are the labels Interscope-Geffen-A&M, the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group and Mercury Records.

Brown adds that “more is coming” and Anonymous-aligned hacktivists are pursuing a joint effort with others to “damage campaign raising abilities of remaining Democrats who support SOPA.”

Although many members of Congress have just this week changed their stance on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, the raid on Megaupload Thursday proved that the feds don’t need SOPA or its sister legislation, PIPA, in order to pose a threat to the Web.

Brown adds that operatives involved in the project will use an “experimental campaign” and search engine optimization techniques “whereby to forever saddle some of these congressmen with their record on this issue.”

RIAA & Movie Studios Caught Pirating TV Shows & Movies

By Sam Biddle - Gizmodo

The same copyright barons pushing SOPA, the awful internet act, are enormous hypocrites, TorrentFreak reports. They want the law as a means of stopping online piracy—but maybe they should start with their own employees.

A Russian BitTorrent tracking firm traced pirated movies and television show downloads back to IP addresses from Sony, Fox, and NBC—as TF points out, "these are the same companies who want to disconnect people from the Internet after they've been caught sharing copyrighted material."

This shouldn't surprise anyone. When studios push fascist copyright law, they're speaking on behalf of their shareholders, not the thousands of people they employ. Those people are ordinary people, who, yes, sometimes pirate albums, movies, shows, and games, like millions of other ordinary people around the world. But the hypocrisy is more than superficial. We shouldn't ever let companies that can't control their own miscreant employees shape federal legislation for all of us.

...and...

The RIAA Pirated $9 Million Worth of TV Shows
By Mario Aguilar - Gizmodo
 
The same RIAA that makes examples out of ordinary folks by suing them for millions of dollars for file sharing? Turns out someone there's been pirating full seasons of Dexter. Nine million dollars worth. Whoops!

That number—$150,000 for each of the 60 episodes illegally downloaded on the RIAA HQ ISP (OK?)—comes compliments of YouHaveDownloaded which logged the BitTorrent activity of some 50 million users and revealed that not only are the major movie studios pirating their own movies, but the RIAA is downloading pirated TV shows. Lots of 'em.

Again, this is the same RIAA that has been shaking down a Minnesota mother of four for $1.5 million over 24 songs she shared on Kazaa. And it turns out, they're being generous in that case! Since the statutory damages cited by its own guidelines are much higher:

… copyright holders can sue you for up to $150,000 in statutory damages for each of their copyrighted works that you illegally copy or distribute.

So let's see, $150k per episode times 60 episodes comes out to roughly... $9,000,000, checks payable to CBS.

Look, the RIAA's method of "enforcing" copyright law by suing people to oblivion is unfair. But to layer hypocrisy on top of that unfairness is just gross. How about you get your own house in order before you target your next Minnesota mom?

ACTA text shows US caved in on Internet provisions/Kiss says "Sue EVERYBODY!" (3 articles)

By Nate Anderson | Ars Technica

Talk about a cave-in. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been three years in the making, and at one point included language advocating "three strikes" regimes, ordering ISPs to develop anti-piracy plans, promoting tough DRM anticircumvention language, setting up a "takedown" notification system, and "secondary liability" for device makers. Europeans were demanding protection for their geographic marks (Champagne, etc). Other countries wanted patents in the mix.


That's all gone in today's release of the "near-final" ACTA text (PDF). US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, whose office negotiated the US side of the deal, issued astatement this morning about the "tremendous progress in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy," but the real story here is the tremendous climbdown by US negotiators, who have largely failed in their attempts to push the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) onto the rest of the world.

Apparently, a face-saving agreement is better than no agreement at all—but even the neutered ACTA we see today could run into problems. Mexico's Senate yesterday approved a nonbinding resolution asking for the country to suspend participation in ACTA, while key members of the European Parliament have also expressed skepticism about the deal.

Even Public Knowledge, a DC advocacy group that has long opposed ACTA, said today that the new text is "a qualified victory for those who want to protect the digital rights of consumers around the world. Some of the most egregious provisions from earlier drafts have been removed on topics ranging from digital protection measures to the liability of intermediaries like Internet Service Providers and search engines."

Let's see what's left.

Internet piracy. In earlier drafts, ISPs were told that they must have a policy for disconnecting repeat infringers (something already in the DMCA) in order to steer clear of liability, and disconnecting users after "three strikes" was held up as a model. All of this is gone, reduced to a mere footnote saying that countries can do what they want to limit ISP liability.

French group La Quadrature du Net remains unhappy about wording that "seeks to extend the scope of the 'digital chapter' to criminalize 'unlawful uses of means of widespread distribution.'" But that wording says nothing about "criminalizing" anything (the "enforcement" here refers to both civil and criminal enforcement, as the previous paragraph in the text makes clear). And the specific phrase "including the unlawful use of means of widespread distribution for infringing purposes" is one of the few in the document set off by a highlight and italics, which is to say that it has not been agreed upon.

Cooperation. Instead, ACTA signatories agree to "promote cooperative efforts within the business community to effectively address copyright or related rights infringement while preserving legitimate competition and consistent with each Party’s law, preserving fundamental principles such as freedom of expression, fair process, and privacy." This has the potential to be worrying—will governments push ISPs to start disconnecting users without any judicial oversight? But it's also remarkably vague in what it requires, a far cry from the detailed ISP provisions in previous ACTA drafts.

The RIAA has already sent out a statement confirming that it likes this bit a lot, since "it is estimated that as much as 95 percent of global Internet traffic in music is illegal."

IP lookups. Each country does need to provide some way for rightsholders to turn an IP address into a name. Many countries have this already; in the US, it's a subpoena, while a "Norwich Pharmacal Order" in the UK accomplishes the same thing.

DRM. The tough rules against DRM have been watered down. ACTA signatories have to outlaw DRM circumvention, but there's a huge caveat; this only applies to DRM which restricts acts not authorized by rightsholders "or permitted by law." That last caveat is huge, and aligns ACTA more with the older WIPO Internet Treaties than with the DMCA. This language would appear to allow DRM circumvention when the resulting use is a legal one.

Sadly, when it comes to tools for doing the circumventing, these are broadly banned, even where some limited uses might be legal. This appears to set up a situation in which an ACTA signatory could allow people to bypass DRM to make backups or exercise fair use rights, but could not allow distribution of the tools to help them do it.

Patents. Patents appear to be gone from much of the treaty (with the US pushing hard to keep them out of the "civil enforcement" section as well, though this remains contentious).

Geographic indicators. Europe has already indicated that it may not support ACTA if its precious food marks are not protected worldwide (something that would force Wisconsin-produced "Parmesan" to change its name, for instance, since Parmiggiano-Reggiano is a protected geographic mark.) The new text does not mention such marks specifically, though Sean Flynn of American University worries that they could be snuck in through an ambiguous phrase in the border seizure section.

iPod searches at the border? The "de minimis" provision remains. ACTA countries can "exclude from the application of this Section small quantities of goods of a non-commercial nature contained in travelers’ personal luggage."

Green destruction. When customs officials do seize loads of counterfeit T-shirts, say, they can't just remove the labels and let the items enter the commerce stream. Instead, the good should be destroyed. When that happens, the bonfire must be a "green" one, as "the destruction of goods infringing intellectual property rights shall be done consistently with each Party’s laws and regulations on environmental matters."

Camcording. Even the MPAA's beloved camcording rule, which has been in ACTA drafts for a long while, could be in trouble. The draft text makes clear that some countries still believe that criminalizing theater cammers should be optional, and the parties have yet to reach an agreement.

Cave-in

As Canadian law professor Michael Geist puts it, "one of the biggest stories over the three year negotiation of ACTA has been the willingness of the US to cave on the Internet provisions... The draft released today is a far cry from that proposal with the intermediary liability provisions largely removed and the DMCA digital lock provisions much closer to the [existing] WIPO Internet treaty model.

"Taken together, the Internet chapter must be seen as failure by the US, which clearly envisioned using ACTA to export its DMCA-style approach."

But there are plenty of other opportunities for mischief, especially when it comes to technical details or to items like statutory damages and how they might be calculated. This is especially true since ACTA negotiators have shown the usual preference for exporting intellectual property protections while leaving limitations and fair uses up for grabs.

With no more negotiating sessions scheduled, this is close to a final draft, and something like it will probably be adopted unless countries start pulling out of the agreement altogether.

***

MPAA loves ACTA, but European Parliament "alarmed" by it

By Nate Anderson

The motion picture business likes (PDF) the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). After a few tough years of record-setting box office receipts, the industry welcomes new legal enforcement tools that will "protect the jobs of the millions of men and women working in film and other creative industries."

But the European Parliament isn't convinced yet. After all, there's not even a text to view. And despite official statements expressing peace, love, and harmony, it's clear that ACTA hasn't actually been finalized and that some real issues still remain.

So the news that negotiators have packed it in and will host no more meetings didn't sit very well with Parliament, which worries that an incomplete deal is being passed off as final and will soon be shoved down its throat. To keep its collective throat clear of ACTA-sized obstructions, key members of Parliament have taken preemptive measures.

According to Euractiv, MEPs including Parliamentary Vice President Stavros Lambrinidis, are "alarmed" and have drafted a letter to the European Commission, which handled the negotiations.

"If the agreement is indeed concluded, we demand from the Commission to present the final text of the negotiation to the European Parliament as soon as it is procedurally possible," said the letter, which also called on the EU not to apply anything in ACTA "before the European Parliament has the chance to express its informed opinion on the issue."

That opinion could be a cantankerous one. Parliament has shown repeated irritation at being kept in the dark about ACTA negotiations. A group of MEPs asked ACTA negotiators to meet with them last month in Tokyo, but the Japanese government declined to arrange the meeting, citing scheduling concerns. And MEPs have shown concern over the Internet portions of ACTA, along with patent issues that could create problems for access to medicines.

We'll know more about ACTA, and its reception, on October 7, when both US and EU negotiators will provide briefings and (apparently) the text of the deal.

***

KISS frontman on P2P: "Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars."

By Matthew Lasar | Last updated about 16 hours ago

The bassist and businessman behind the legendary rock band KISS was on hand at the MIPCOM convention in Cannes, France on Tuesday. And Gene Simmons had a message for aspiring entertainers everywhere: sue first, think later.

"Make sure your brand is protected," Simmons warned during a panel discussion. "Make sure there are no incursions. Be litigious. Sue everybody. Take their homes, their cars. Don't let anybody cross that line."

And that includes all those naughty girls and boys with their BitTorrent and Limewire kits. Double for them, in fact.

"The music industry was asleep at the wheel," Simmons complained, "and didn't have the balls to sue every fresh-faced, freckle-faced college kid who downloaded material. And so now we're left with hundreds of thousands of people without jobs. There's no industry."

"No industry" hasn't stopped Simmons from cashing in big; he was at the Cannes event to promote his TV show, Gene Simmons' Family Jewels, now celebrating its 100th episode. From KISS and the TV series, Simmons' enterprise has managed to spin off three thousand products, he bragged.

"Everything from KISS condoms to KISS caskets," Simmons disclosed. "We'll get you coming and we'll get you going. We literally have everything from KISS Hi-Def television sets that are about to come on the market to KISS Motorcycles. Well, it's Planet KISS. Oh, I've already trademarked that, I forgot that."

Business is my crack

But back to that "sue every fresh faced, freckle faced" college kid business. We're talking about something close to 60 million P2P downloaders of all ages by the middle of the last decade. And during the height of the Recording Industry Association of America's file-sharing lawsuits, the trade association admitted that these actions were a total money pit. One estimate suggests that RIAA paid its lawyers more than $16 million in 2008 and recouped a paltry $391,000 in infringement settlements (the RIAA pointed out later that its bills for legal work included all sorts of non-P2P work, however).

The RIAA filed 18,000 to 20,000 legal actions; multiply that by every last American P2P user and the bill would be astonishing. The only two cases to proceed through a trial to a verdict have now been tied up in retrials and appeals, a ferociously expensive and laborious process that simply doesn't scale well.

No worries, says Simmons, who obviously sees himself as quite the wheeler-dealer. "Business is my crack," he declared. "That's what motivates me. Getting up every day and doing deals." And so he offered parables to back his logic.

The captain and the fox

"There's a ship that goes across the water," Simmons explained. "The captain is up there and some guy comes up in a sailor suit and says 'Captain! Captain! We have a hole'."

"Well, how big is the hole?" the captain asks.

"Well it's only yea big," the 'guy in the sailor suit' (presumably a sailor) replies. "We'll probably only get in a whole day a glass of water."

"Well," Simmons concluded, "this moron is either going to say don't worry about it, or he's going to plug up that hole then and there." Otherwise: "By the end of that journey that ship will sink."

In case this story didn't clinch the point for Simmons' audience, he rolled out the sad tale of the farmer and the fox.

Once upon a time, he explained, there was a farmer, who noticed that a baby fox was taking an egg from the chicken coop.

The farmer couldn't kill it; the fox was too cute.

"But that little fox went back with a free egg," Simmons warned, "and told all the other little foxes about it, and then the foxes overran the farm, killed all the chickens, took all the eggs, and didn't pay for it."

"Now the farmer lost his farm. His wife divorced him and went with another farmer who was smarter. The kids ran off because the spineless farmer didn't have enough sense to kill the fox. The trucks that delivered the chickens—they're all out of business. The stores that sold them—they're out of business."

"Why?" Simmons declared. "Because of one goddamn cute little fox. So don't let any cute little foxes get near your henhouse!"

And if they do, sue the bastards.

***

(Yeah, screw you, Gene! Asshole! When was the last time you were even reloevant?--jef)

53 gay porn pirates face new round of P2P lawsuits

(So, if the RIAA's biggest target is gay porn sharers, I have to wonder about their ability to prosecute. I mean, I guess there are several gay porn sharers out there, but more than people sharing Avatar?--jef)

***

Gay porn pirates face new P2P lawsuits

By Nate Anderson | 08/11/10 | Ars Technica

It's not just the game plan of the RIAA and the new US Copyright Group—numerous rightsholders have resorted to mass federal lawsuits against P2P users, including those in the gay porn industry. On Monday, Lucas Entertainment filed its first such lawsuit targeting 53 BitTorrent users alleged to have shared its pornographic film Kings of New York.

The complaint is brief. Lucas says nothing about why it thinks that these users downloaded its film except to note that "monitoring of online infringement of Plaintiff's motion picture is ongoing." Instead, it has simply presented the judge with a list of 53 IP addresses, all of which are said to have visited gay-torrents.net ("a private website known for its vast index of videos depicting gay pornography") and then shared the film in question.

In a separate sworn declaration filed yesterday, however, Lucas shed some light on its information collection practices. What does a porn producer know about tracking BitTorrent users? Little, so Lucas hired the Copyright Defense Agency, a new firm with an almost nonfunctional website.

You too can become a BitTorrent detective!

According to Eric Green, CDA's chief operating officer and a former Verizon mid-level manager, he took over CDA's operation in July of this year and operates from Las Colinas, Texas. On August 5, under contract from Lucas, Green "searched for the film on public and private torrent sites," then downloaded what he found on gay-torrents.net. He then recorded the IP address of every computer serving him pieces of the file. Sophisticated, this was not.

While some companies have custom software and carefully documented processes, Green "recorded what I observed both as plain text in a spreadsheet and through a series of screenshots executed through the Windows Operating System, which captured exactly what was being displayed on my computer screen at the time the screenshots were taken. The time of these observations was duly noted in my spreadsheet."

Next, he took his 53 IP addresses and sent each one to MaxMind, an IP lookup service, which told him which service provider controlled the block of addresses that included his target. Green then "manually" did his own reverse DNS lookup "to confirm that the IP addresses were not faked and that they properly corresponded with their internet routing assignments, as designated by the listed service provider."

When his torrent download completed, Green took a look. He "opened the file and watched enough of the film, at varying intervals, to determine it was indeed the film for which it was named, Plaintiff’s film, Kings of New York. It was indeed a perfect and unauthorized copy of said film. I then saved copies of my logs and screenshots to a secure and private web server for archival purposes."

Moving quickly

The time between the alleged infringement and the filing of the federal lawsuit was amazingly short: three or four days. The infringements were detected on August 5-6, and the Lucas lawsuit was filed on August 9.

In addition, the company has already asked the judge to force ISPs to respond to subpoenas in 15 days or less. Clearly, speed is an issue.

The suit also claims the copyright infringement here was "intentional," which opens the door to much higher statutory damages that top out at $150,000 per infringement.

More defendants will be added to the case before it's over. Lucas suggests that "information obtained in discovery will lead to the identification of additional infringing parties," and its ongoing "monitoring" may contribute more names, too. These sorts of schemes generally rely more on settlement letters than actual trials to collect the cash, however; something that may be doubly true when gay porn is the issue.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)

ACTA

It looks like the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will become law before long. This is a little unusual, because Congress will not pass or approve it. It's also unusual because its primary impact has nothing to do with counterfeiting and little to do with trade. Instead, ACTA will regulate the internet.

Even worse than putting the government in charge, ACTA in its current form will give organizations such as the recording industry (RIAA) and movie industry (MPAA) the indirect authority to shut down web sites and ban individuals from the internet.

Coincidentally, the RIAA and MPAA were involved in the development, drafting, and negotiations of ACTA. The U.S. Congress was not informed of the details of the negotiations, even when they asked for the information. Last year the White House said it would "damage the national security" if they released information on ACTA.

In addition, coincidentally, the RIAA and MPAA pay millions of dollars to U.S. politicians in campaign contributions. Also, coincidentally, these five attorneys have all represented the RIAA in the past decade:

Thomas Perrilli was appointed U.S. Associate Attorney General by Obama.

David Ogden was appointed Deputy Attorney General by Obama (he resigned last December).

Brian Hauck was appointed as counsel to the Associate Attorney General. Hauck's position is to serve as Perrelli's lawyer.

Ginger Anders was appointed as Assistant to Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who has been nominated for the Supreme Court.

Ian Gershengorn was appointed Deputy Assistant Attorney of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice.

These five also come from the same law firm, Jenner and Block. In fairness, most seem to be exceptional lawyers, and, more importantly, Ginger Anders is an excellent violin player.

Finally, a draft of the agreement has been made public, not by the U.S. Government, but by the European Union. The European Parliament voted 633 to 13 to demand the release of ACTA's text, while the U.S. Congress collected campaign contributions from the RIAA and MPAA and refused to make it public.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20003005-38.html

It seems odd for industry groups to be involved in passing what amounts to a major law affecting the majority of the people in the U.S., without even informing Congress of the content. As a "trade agreement," ACTA can and probably will become law by executive order, without Congressional approval.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20004450-38.html

ACTA: Reactions Roll In for the Latest "Official Version"

Praising, cursing ACTA: reactions roll in
By Nate Anderson

Ars has already dived deep into the bowels of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and our findings were about as pretty as that metaphor suggests.

The agreement has already been improved under public pressure, so what's the broader reaction to its release? We rounded up some of the most interesting reactions. If you want a sense of how the debate over ACTA will play out over the rest of this year, consider these talking points a sneak preview.

Hollywood: The MPAA likes ACTA, of course. "We think it represents a solid building block, an important step forward in the work of like-minded governments to strengthen protection against Internet piracy, the fastest growing threat to filmed entertainment and other segments of the copyright industries.

"We firmly believe that ACTA must include robust protections for intellectual property online, building on established international norms if it is to meet its potential as a state-of-the art agreement to combat counterfeiting and piracy. We hope the release of this draft will build momentum for a final agreement... No business can sustain itself if forced to compete against the widespread theft and unlawful distribution of its products.”

Recording industry. We checked in with the RIAA, but they were not yet ready to comment. Instead, they pointed to a letter from November that the group signed. That letter makes clear that getting ISPs to play ball on dealing with piracy is the big goal here.

"Online theft is a critical challenge for each of the diverse copyright-based sectors represented by the signatories to this letter. In this regard, it is essential that ACTA include a robust Internet chapter that, among other things, provides legal incentives for cross-industry cooperation to combat online piracy."

Computer companies: CCIA, a trade group representing Microsoft, Google, and others, blasted ACTA. It may not affect US law, but it will have ripple effects in many other places.

"According to CCIA's analysis, the proposed language in ACTA compels other countries to increase intellectual property penalties—without mandating any protections found in US law that shield US technology and Internet companies. These details indicate that ACTA is not consistent with the commitment to a balanced copyright expressed by US officials at a recent assembly of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)."

CEO Ed Black was more blunt. "An agreement that says, 'Please punish our tech companies' will not be good for US trade," he said. "ACTA is not a trade agreement. It is an anti-trade agreement that closes foreign markets for US tech companies. For 37 years CCIA has been pro trade and opposing ACTA is pro trade.

"Those defending ACTA insist it doesn’t change US law. But it exports the most insidious parts of our digital copyright law and makes the protections and consumer-oriented parts of it optional."

Independent music labels: A2IM, the American Association of Independent Music, loves ACTA.

"As the trade organization representing American independent music labels, our community of content creators contributes greatly to the rich cultural history —and to the economy, including exports—of the United States," said the group. "But in order to continue creating diverse, compelling music for fans, the artists who make music and those who invest in them must be able to make a living."

Video gamers: The Entertainment Consumers Association, which represents gamers, complains about the process.

"That so little insight of the public, or of stakeholder groups with consumer’s interests, and with the overt and direct involvement of trade associations and corporate interests to-date, the natural balance that can and should exist was needlessly askew," it said.

Specific concerns include anti-circumvention rules, the idea of "imminent" infringement (think Minority Report's "pre-crime"), and criminal penalties for "willful copyright infringement" even with no motive of financial gain.

ACTA's leakers: La Quadrature du Net, the French group that first leaked a complete ACTA draft last month, isn't pleased with the official release.

"This whole policy laundering is incompatible with democracy and the ideals of preserving fundamental rights, Internet, public health and innovation at large," said the group today, though it did express hope.

"After more than two years of opaque elaboration, ACTA negotiators have finally bowed to the pressure of NGOs and citizens worldwide... This release of the text shows how effective the massive mobilization of citizens around the world can be... We must firmly refuse that unelected officials on their own devise policies that have an impact on such critical societal issues."

Other public interest groups like the EFF and Public Knowledge have yet to weigh in... but if they like ACTA, the world might just seize up in shock and stop turning altogether.

Here's the official version of the current draft treaty

IPEC "Anti-infringement" software for home computers

The Entertainment Industry's Dystopia of the Future

Commentary by Richard Esguerra

We're not easily shocked by entertainment industry overreaching; unfortunately, it's par for the course. But we were taken aback by the wish list the industry submitted in response to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator's request for comments on the forthcoming "Joint Strategic Plan" for intellectual property enforcement. The comments submitted by various organizations provide a kind of window into how these organizations view both intellectual property and the public interest. For example, EFF and other public interest groups have asked the IPEC to take a balanced approach to intellectual property enforcement, paying close attention to the actual harm caused, the potential unexpected consequences of government intervention, and compelling countervailing priorities.
The joint comment filed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and others stands as a sharp contrast, mapping out a vision of the future where Big Media priorities are woven deep into the Internet, law enforcement, and educational institutions.

Consider the following, all taken from the entertainment industry's submission to the IPEC.

"Anti-infringement" software for home computers

There are several technologies and methods that can be used by network administrators and providers...these include [consumer] tools for managing copyright infringement from the home (based on tools used to protect consumers from viruses and malware).

In other words, the entertainment industry thinks consumers should voluntarily install software that constantly scans our computers and identifies (and perhaps deletes) files found to be "infringing." It's hard to believe the industry thinks savvy, security-conscious consumers would voluntarily do so. But those who remember the Sony BMG rootkit debacle know that the entertainment industry is all too willing to sacrifice consumers at the altar of copyright enforcement.

Pervasive copyright filtering

Network administrators and providers should be encouraged to implement those solutions that are available and reasonable to address infringement on their networks. [This suggestion is preceded by a list of filtering methods, like protocol filtering, fingerprint-based filtering, bandwidth throttling, etc.]

The entertainment industry loves widespread filtering as a "solution" to online copyright infringement — in fact, it has successfully persuaded Congress to push these technologies on institutions of higher-education.
But this "solution" is full of flaws. First, even the "best" automated copyright blocking systems fail to protect fair use. Worse, these techniques are unlikely to make any lasting dent on infringing behavior, but will instead just invite the use of more encryption and private "darknets" (or even just more hand-to-hand sharing of hard drives and burned DVDs). But perhaps the most pernicious effect may be that copyright protection measures can be trojan horses for consumer surveillance. In an age of warrantless wiretapping and national censorship, building more surveillance and inspection technologies into the heart of the Internet is an obviously bad idea. In the words of the Hollywood movie, "if you build it, they will come."

Intimidate and propagandize travelers at the border

Customs authorities should be encouraged to do more to educate the traveling public and entrants into the United States about these issues. In particular, points of entry into the United States are underused venues for educating the public about the threat to our economy (and to public safety) posed by counterfeit and pirate products. Customs forms should be amended to require the disclosure of pirate or counterfeit items being brought into the United States.

Does that iPod in your hand luggage contain copies of songs extracted from friends' CDs? Is your computer storing movies ripped from DVD (handy for conserving battery life on long trips)? Was that book you bought overseas "licensed" for use in the United States? These are the kinds of questions the industry would like you to answer on your customs form when you cross borders or return home from abroad. What is more, this suggestion also raises the specter of something we've heard the entertainment industry suggest before: more searches and seizures of electronic goods at the border. Once border officials are empowered to search every electronic device for "pirated" content, digital privacy will all but disappear, at least for international travelers. From what we've learned about the fight over a de minimis border measures search exclusion in the latest leaked text, ACTA might just try to make this a reality.

Bully countries that have tech-friendly policies

The government should develop a process to identify those online sites that are most significantly engaged in conducting or facilitating the theft of intellectual property. Among other uses, this identification would be valuable in the interagency process that culminates in the annual Special 301 report, listing countries that fail to provide adequate and effective protection to U.S. intellectual property rights holders. Special 301 could provide a focus on those countries where companies engaged in systematic online theft of U.S. copyrighted materials are registered or operated, or where their sites are hosted. Targeting such companies and websites in the Special 301 report would put the countries involved on notice that dealing with such hotbeds of copyright theft will be an important topic of bilateral engagement with the U.S. in the year to come. (As noted above, while many of these sites are located outside the U.S., their ability to distribute pirate content in the U.S. depends on U.S.-based ISP communications facilities and services and U.S.-based server farms operated commercially by U.S.-based companies.)

Some background: the Special 301 process is a particularly unpleasant annual procedure by which the United States Trade Representative (USTR) pressures other countries to adopt tougher intellectual property laws and spend more for IP enforcement. In the Special 301 report, the USTR singles out particular countries for their "bad" intellectual property policies, placing them on a watch list, and threatening trade sanctions for those that deny "adequate and effective protection" for US IP rightsholders or restrict fair and equitable market access for US intellectual property.
Before this year, the US Trade Representative only sought input from the entertainment andpharmaceutical industries for these rankings, resulting in unbalanced assessment criteria. Countries have been listed for failing to sign on to controversial international treaties or for not mirroring certain parts of US law. For example, Chile was named for considering fair use-style exceptions to its copyright law; Canada was listed for requiring that its customs officers have a court order before seizing goods at the border; and Israel was highlighted for refusing to adopt DMCA-style anti-circumvention provisions after legislative debate concluded that anti-circumvention laws would have no effect on copyright infringement.
The creative communities' proposal imagines that the US Trade Representative should become a glorified messenger for Big Media, using its resources to pressure countries that "harbor" websites and Internet services that facilitate copyright infringement. In other words, they believe that the USTR should put US IP rightsholders' interests at the center of its foreign policy, ignoring other foreign policy goals such as regional security, and promoting innovation and competition.

Federal agents working on Hollywood's clock

The planned release of a blockbuster motion picture should be acknowledged as an event that attracts the focused efforts of copyright thieves, who will seek to obtain and distribute pre-release versions and/or to undermine legitimate release by unauthorized distribution through other channels. Enforcement agencies (notably within DOJ and DHS) should plan a similarly focused preventive and responsive strategy. An interagency task force should work with industry to coordinate and make advance plans to try to interdict these most damaging forms of copyright theft, and to react swiftly with enforcement actions where necessary.

This is perhaps the most revealing of the proposals: big Hollywood studios deputizing the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to provide taxpayer-supported muscle for summer blockbuster films. Jokes have been made about SWAT team raids on stereotypical file-sharers in college dorm rooms — but this entertainment industry request to "interdict...and to react swiftly with enforcement actions" brings that joke ridiculously close to reality.

What next?

Of course, these comments are just an entertainment industry wishlist, an exercise in asking for the moon. But they reveal a great deal about the entertainment industry's vision of the 21st century: less privacy (with citizens actively participating in their own surveillance), a less-neutral Internet, and federal agents acting as paid muscle to protect profits of summer blockbusters.

"Most piracy estimates are bogus" US government finally admits

US government finally admits most piracy estimates are bogus
By Nate Anderson

We've all seen the studies trumpeting massive losses to the US economy from piracy. One famous figure, used literally for decades by rightsholders and the government, said that 750,000 jobs and up to $250 billion a year could be lost in the US economy thanks to IP infringement. A couple years ago, we thoroughly debunked that figure. For years, Business Software Alliance reports on software piracy assumed that each illicit copy was a lost sale. And the MPAA's own commissioned study on movie piracy turned out to overstate collegiate downloading by a factor of three.

Can we trust any of these claims about piracy?

The US doesn't think so. In a new report out yesterday, the government's own internal watchdog took a close look at "efforts to quantify the economic effects of counterfeit and pirated goods." After examining all the data and consulting with numerous experts inside and outside of government, the Government Accountability Office concluded (PDF) that it is "difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts."

More specific studies that focus only on single industries don't fare much better because "the illicit nature of counterfeiting and piracy makes estimating the economic impact of IP infringements extremely difficult." And when it comes time to choose a substitution rate (how much of the infringing activity should be counted as a lost sale), we're left only with "assumptions... which can have enormous impacts on the resulting estimates."

The GAO then went on to slam three particular reports often linked to the government. They're all commonly cited, they're all bogus, and at least one is still being used officially.

Three commonly cited estimates of U.S. industry losses due to counterfeiting have been sourced to U.S. agencies, but cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology.

First, a number of industry, media, and government publications have cited an FBI estimate that U.S. businesses lose $200-$250 billion to counterfeiting on an annual basis. This estimate was contained in a 2002 FBI press release, but FBI officials told us that it has no record of source data or methodology for generating the estimate and that it cannot be corroborated.

Second, a 2002 CBP press release contained an estimate that U.S. businesses and industries lose $200 billion a year in revenue and 750,000 jobs due to counterfeits of merchandise. However, a CBP official stated that these figures are of uncertain origin, have been discredited, and are no longer used by CBP. A March 2009 CBP internal memo was circulated to inform staff not to use the figures. However, another entity within DHS continues to use them.

Third, the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association reported an estimate that the U.S. automotive parts industry has lost $3 billion in sales due to counterfeit goods and attributed the figure to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The OECD has also referenced this estimate in its report on counterfeiting and piracy, citing the association report that is sourced to the FTC. However, when we contacted FTC officials to substantiate the estimate, they were unable to locate any record or source of this estimate within its reports or archives, and officials could not recall the agency ever developing or using this estimate. These estimates attributed to FBI, CBP, and FTC continue to be referenced by various industry and government sources as evidence of the significance of the counterfeiting and piracy problem to the U.S. economy.

The GAO then sets its sights on several private industry reports. The Business Software Alliance claimed a loss of $9 billion to piracy in 2008, but its study "uses assumptions that have raised concerns among experts we interviewed, including the assumption of a one-to-one rate of substitution and questions on how the results from the surveyed countries are extrapolated to non-surveyed countries."

Next up was the MPAA, which has already publicly taken its lumps for that flawed 2005 survey we mentioned above. But even when you set aside the mistaken initial conclusion about collegiate downloading, the study still shouldn't be used by lawmakers; it's a black box.

"It is difficult, based on the information provided in the study, to determine how the authors handled key assumptions such as substitution rates and extrapolation from the survey sample to the broader population," says the GAO.

More than they bargained for

Why is the government even looking into this issue? It's all due to the PRO-IP Act, which passed under President Bush and has led President Obama to appoint an Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator within the White House. Part of the IPEC's duties include gathering data on piracy and counterfeiting, and current IPEC Victoria Espinel is now rounding up that data. The GAO report is part of this process, and it certainly doesn't make industry estimates look compelling.

This is ironic for a bill that was backed by the big rightsholders; even its acronym, the PRO-IP Act, shows what it was supposed to do. But, by hauling the black art of "piracy surveys" into the light, the PRO-IP Act is forcing rightsholders to tone down some of their more specific and alarmist rhetoric.

The RIAA, MPAA and others have already asked Espinel to make Internet piracy her principal focus in order to "push back the tide of copyright theft."

What about all that data Espinel asked for, including detailed methodologies? The content industries basically punted, pointing to three surveys done by a single guy, Stephen Siwek of the Institute for Policy Innovation. GAO looked specifically at Siwek's work, all of which seeks to model effects of piracy on the entire US economy.

The government concluded that "most of the experts we interviewed" were reluctant to embrace Siwek's methodology; his approach comes from the Commerce Department, but it simply wasn't designed to measure what's being measured here. For instance, these studies ignore the obvious points that pirating goods leaves consumers with more disposable income, which is likely spent elsewhere in the economy. Effects on the economy as a whole, then, are terribly speculative and seem more likely to be simply redistributive.

None of this is to say that piracy and counterfeiting aren't real problems. The GAO accepts that the problem is "sizeable," but it also points out just how much bad data is used to produce these studies. Actual dollar figures and job loss numbers should be handled with extreme care and a good bit of skepticism; the GAO also noted that numerous experts told it that "there were positive effects [from piracy on the economy] and they should be assessed as well."

This is a helpful, level-headed review from the GAO, one that (hopefully) brings some of the debates over digital infringement into saner territory.

When You Hum, You Take Bread From The Mouths Of Musicians

And Every Time You Hum To Yourself, You’re Taking Bread From The Mouths Of Musicians
Mar 19, 2010 By Ken. Technology

The RIAA, whose Luddite thuggery and silly triumphalism represent the desperate grabbing of a drowning man, is only one villain. They’re like, say, Bizarro. “Me am protecting digital rights by suing college students for million dollars!”

By contrast, the International Intellectual Property Alliance, or IIPA, is the entire Legion of Doom. The IIPA, composed of the rogue’s gallery of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), Business Software Alliance (BSA), Entertainment Software Association (ESA), Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA), Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA) and the RIAA, uses international lobbying the way the RIAA uses litigation — indiscriminately and towards the promotion of Pure Evil. Or, at least, pure profit.

Case in point: the IIPA, acting on behalf of its software-writing members, is doing everything it can to suppress the open-source movement. I’m browsing and writing this right now with Firefox, an exceptionally useful open-source product. Others, as you probably know, include Linux and Drupal and even Google Chrome. But the IIPA hates open source. The IIPA asserts that open source software “weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness.” Well, I suppose it does, to the extent you define “competitiveness” to mean “the ability for software companies to make big money off of shitty, bug-ridden, virus-susceptible products, because nobody is offering superior free or inexpensive products.”

How does the IIPA do it? Well, it uses the scare-word piracy the way our government uses the scare-word terrorism. The IIPA produces a watchlist of countries that “deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights or fair and equitable market access for U.S. persons relying on intellectual property protection.” And now, apparently, the IIPA believes that if the government of a country uses open-source software, it merits inclusion on that list:

But tucked into the country surveys for Indonesia, the Philippines and India are concerns about the government urging or mandating the use of open-source software in government offices. Indonesia’s government has circulated a memo to all state-run offices encouraging (no requirement, just encouragement) the switch to open source, citing the desire to reduce software copyright infringement, interestingly enough. While the IIPA says that one point is a lofty goal, open source is evil, it explains, because it “weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness.”

About the Philippines, merely reports that the government was considering a bill that would mandate the use of Open Source in government offices rang alarm bells. In the report on India, it’s almost a footnote – indeed, the very last paragraph of the document – that notes the government is thinking about considering mandating OSS use in government offices and this needs to be closely monitored.

Does this have a substantial consequence? Not yet, it would seem — the Legion is merely grumbling and, perhaps, dreaming of what it might do. But it illustrates this point: just because an entity is created and funded by private enterprise, that does not mean that the entity supports innovation or free markets. That entity may, in fact, be the arch-nemesis of those values.