Stupid, Antiquated German Regulations Mean Germans Couldn't Watch Our Google Hangout With Rob Reid Yesterday

from the stupid-regulations dept

Yesterday we did our live streaming interview with Rob Reid about his book, Year Zero, which was a lot of fun. During the course of the video, we discovered (via some tweets) that people in Germany were blocked from watching. As I said in the video, I assumed that this was part of the dispute in Germany between YouTube & GEMA, the German collection society that is demanding huge fees for any music that is played on YouTube. Because -- unlike every other major collection society -- GEMA had refused to come to the table to negotiate a license, YouTube ended up pulling basically all music videos in Germany. I thought perhaps something related to that was why Google Hangouts weren't allowed. Though, I couldn't figure out how that made sense, since we weren't playing any music (Rob's offer to sing, notwithstanding).

However, as pointed out by Ruquay K Calloway, the actual story may be more bizarre. While YouTube has been rightfully proud of launching Hangouts On Air (the feature we used to broadcast live) worldwide, Germany is actually missing from the big list.

It turns out that it may be a different ridiculous regulation, however. There's an old "broadcasting law" in Germany that was put on the books decades ago to stop pirate TV stations. And it says you can't broadcast to more than 500 people without a special license. And, because that's impossible for every one-off person seeking to use a tool like Hangouts on Air, it appears that Hangouts On Air is just off-limits in Germany. So, I'm sorry for all the Germans who wanted to watch the video live, but perhaps an effort should be made to wipe that silly rule off the books already.

Filed Under: broadcast, germany, hangouts, hangouts on air, rob reid, rules, youtube

Court Not Impressed With ivi's Legal Loopholes, Shoots Online TV Broadcaster Down

from the playing-games-with-the-law dept

A few months back, we wrote about a company called ivi, which was trying to use some legal loopholes to stream broadcast TV online. It was basically trying to use a part of the law (Section 111 for those playing along with the home game) that was designed to make it easier for cable stations to rebroadcast network TV. However, the court is not buying it and has issued a preliminary injunction ordering the site to shut down its service. The court points out that ivi isn't just playing a single loophole game, but it's really trying to thread the needle through two separate loopholes. For the strategy to work, not only does Section 111 have to apply to the internet provider, but at the same time, it has to exempt itself from the Communications Act. The court suggests this tapdance is too much to take:

In other words, defendants argue that ivi is a cable system for purposes of the Copyright Act, and thus may take advantage of the compulsory license, but that it is not a cable system for purposes of the Communications Act, and thus it need not comply with the requirements of that Act and the rules of the FCC promulgated thereunder.

The thing is, the more I read the details, the more I actually think that ivi's legal argument makes sense, even if the court disagrees. The problem here is the way the laws are written. A strict reading of Section 111 certainly suggests that ivi probably qualifies and can rebroadcast network TV with a nominal payment to the Copyright Office. At the same time, it's true that the Communications Act almost certainly doesn't apply to ivi, because it doesn't cover the internet. In other words, ivi's careful loophole threading seems to make sense. The more reasonable response from the court wouldn't have been to shut it down, but to allow it to go forward -- and for Congress to determine if that loophole should or should not exist (meaning the TV industry lobbyists step in and Congress shuts the loophole).

All that said, this whole fight seems pretty silly. I still don't understand why the TV networks are that upset by ivi, and I still don't see how ivi has a business model that's particularly compelling or sustainable. The networks might have been better served by just letting ivi flop on its own. I can't see too many people willing to pay up just to get broadcast TV...

Filed Under: broadcast, cable, copyright, loopholes
Companies: ivi

A Look At Rupert Murdoch's History Of Internet Failures

from the what-do-they-have-in-common dept

Ross Pruden points us to a neat little graphic that Mediaweek put together, highlighting all of News Corps.' internet failures over the years (pdf) as it gets ready to launch its iPad only publication called The Daily. If you look at the image (or click it to go to the original Mediaweek pdf), you begin to sense a pattern: The downfall in almost every case is about Murdoch focusing on using the internet as mainly a broadcast medium, rather than a communications medium. Delphi was all about community... and then News Corp. tried to turn it into a place to sell his magazines and newspapers. Fox Interactive was all about pushing content, and had little community. MySpace, of all things, which was really about community from the beginning, has completely faltered under News Corps' control, because they tried to focus on using it to sell music and stopped investing in any sort of real community features -- as services like Facebook and Twitter totally leapfrogged them on that front. It's the same story over and over again, and given that The Daily is so focused on platform, rather than users, it seems likely to be a repeat of the same mistake all over again.

Filed Under: broadcast, community, content, internet, rupert murdoch
Companies: news corp.

The Similarity Between ACTA And Chinese Internet Censorship

from the it's-all-about-secondary-liability dept

To be fair, it may have been Bono who first made the connection explicit, but others are beginning to notice that there are some worrisome parallels between what is being pushed via ACTA and other methods and ongoing internet censorship in China. The latest, as pointed out by the EFF, is writer Rebecca MacKinnon, who walks you through the way in which Chinese censorship is based on the same faulty principle as ACTA's push for secondary liability for ISPs.

Let's take a step back to explain this. We've discussed, in the past, that the way China operates its "Great Firewall" is not by explicitly banning anything. Instead, it simply puts liability on third parties such as ISPs and says they'll take the blame and face the consequences for any "bad stuff" that is allowed through to Chinese users. As MacKinnon notes, this is really "intermediary liability," or (obviously enough) putting the liability for actions on an intermediary to force them to try to curb the behavior of end users. In this way, the Chinese government can claim that it doesn't censor the internet and there's no such thing as a "Great Firewall," because it doesn't exist as a single thing. It's just that the government will punish ISPs who don't block "bad stuff."

But this "intermediary liability" is a big deal, because under any common sense approach to things, you should never blame an third party/intermediary for the actions of end users. And yet, that's exactly what the entertainment industry has been pushing. One of the key components being pushed for the internet section of ACTA is the idea of expanding "secondary liability" or "contributory copyright infringement" or whatever they want to call it. In reality, it's the same intermediary liability that China uses to have ISPs censor content. The idea is that if you put the liability for file sharing on ISPs, then they will be forced to figure out ways to stop it -- just like ISPs in China are forced to create their own censorship campaigns.

And, of course, this isn't even hypothetical. We've got some real world examples. That's because much of the early language in ACTA was modeled on the "free trade" agreement that the US pressured South Korea into signing. That included such intermediary liability for ISPs when it came to copyright infringement, and guess what happened? First, the country felt it needed to start kicking people off the internet based on a "three strikes" plan, just to satisfy the treaty. Then service providers quickly started banning all sorts of activities, including any music uploads and many video uploads. After all, it's not worth it for the service providers to be liable, so they block the ability to upload all sorts of content. And, of course, with such liability there, others went even further, with some service providers even banning advertisements for any kind of website that could allow copyright infringement, because of the fear that, via such intermediary liability, they may get blamed just for allowing an advertisement that pointed to a site that could be used for copyright infringement.

When you look at the details, it's incredibly similar to the way in which China crafted its Great Firewall. Impose such secondary liability that puts the responsibility on a third party, and and watch those third parties basically lock down all sorts of additional things, just to be safe. Of course, the old school entertainment industry doesn't mind, because preventing you from communicating isn't their problem. They don't see the internet as a communications platform anyway. They're hoping it's the next broadcast medium, and clearing the decks via a Great Firewall an intermediary liability system works right into those plans. The more you look at the details, the more it looks like the entertainment industry is doing everything possible to encircle the internet to make it appear more like a broadcast entertainment medium, rather than a communications medium.

Filed Under: acta, broadcast, censorship, china, communications, contributory infringement, copyright, entertainment, intermediary liability, liability, third party liability

And Now It's Twitter That's Evil

from the we-fear-what-we-don't-understand dept

It's amazing how much people fear what they don't understand. Every few years, there's something new to "fear" online -- and it's often backed up by quotes from clueless "experts" who buy into the fear rather than understanding what's actually happening. When the internet was first becoming mainstream in the 90s, there was the hilariously wrong Rimm Report, which had politicians and the media in a big frenzy about how the internet was just a massive den of porn that needed to be stopped. And, of course, more recently there's been similar attention paid to things like violent video games, despite the lack of evidence of any actual damage done to people playing such games. A few years ago, it was blogs that were evil ("an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective"), according to Dan Lyons, who at the time worked for Forbes, and later became famous thanks to his blog

Now, it seems that the main target of today's moral panic is the various social networking sites. Obviously, there's been a lot of trumped up complaints about sexual predators on social networks (despite the fact that, as social networks have become more popular the number of sexual offenses against children has been dropping). However, in the last few months, we've been seeing various weak attacks on social networking from a variety of other perspectives -- often clearly written by folks who haven't actually used the sites in question very much.

There was the claim that girls who used Facebook more often were more depressed, with the implication being that Facebook made them depressed, rather than the fact that those who were depressed may have turned to Facebook to talk to people and relieve their depression. Then there was the ridiculously misleading reports last week, implying that social networks could be harmful to your health, though the real story turned out to be a lot more benign.

The latest is a bit of fascinatingly yellow journalism out of the UK, where a reporter found a bunch of "experts" to opine on why Twitter was only home to insecure losers. There are a bunch of hilarious quotes from people who apparently have never even used the service:

"Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It's a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity." -- clinical psychologist Oliver James

"Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won't cure it." -- cognitive neuropsychologist Dr David Lewis

"a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. It's like when a parent goes into a child's room to check the child is still breathing. It is a giant baby monitor." -- book author Alain de Botton

The author of the article then goes on to whine about how "mundane" messages on Twitter tend to be -- which is reminiscent of the old complaints about bloggers just blogging about their cats. It's pretty clear that none of these folks have ever really used Twitter -- because they all seem to interpret it as being a broadcast mechanism, rather than a conversational one. This isn't to say that Twitter is right for everyone, but most of the people who find value in it, find value in the conversational aspect of it, not that it "broadcasts" mundane facts of their lives. I know that I've used it to become a lot closer to a number of people, because it allows me not to find out what they had for lunch today, but to converse with them more frequently and with much more depth and insight than I would have had the opportunity otherwise. Sometimes, that's because of direct communications via Twitter, but often it's because of connections created because of Twitter -- such as realizing I'm in the same city at the same time as someone else I'd like to meet. There are still plenty of people who hate Twitter, but it's difficult to take seriously people complaining about it when it seems quite clear they've never even bothered to use it.

Filed Under: broadcast, conversation, moral panic, social networks
Companies: twitter

Pirate Bay Trial In Sweden To Be Broadcast Online

from the good-news dept

We're getting close to the start of the big Pirate Bay trial in Sweden that hopefully will settle the question of whether or not running a torrent tracker search engine is legal in that country. Apparently, the trial is being held in a rather small courtroom, and there was some fear that this would significantly limit media access (especially since all media requests were supposedly being screened to make sure that the reporters "had no connection to the movement" -- whatever that means). The good news, however, is that the court has agreed to the request from The Pirate Bay to stream the audio from the trial. Should be worth paying attention to what happens...

Filed Under: broadcast, sweden, trial
Companies: the pirate bay

RIAA Explanation For Not Wanting Court Broadcast: Those Geeks Might Remix It

from the context-is-king dept

We've already discussed how badly the RIAA does not want the pretrial hearings in the Tenenbaum case to be broadcast -- as was requested by Tenenbaum's lawyers, and approved by the judge in the case. However, the reasoning from the RIAA is pretty laughable. Apparently, it's afraid that (gasp!) some of these tech savvy propaganda-ists out there might remix the video and "manipulate" it to take RIAA arguments out of context. Of course, in saying so, the RIAA has now pretty much guaranteed that's what will happen, but... that still shouldn't matter. We know the RIAA is against the whole concept of remixing, but we thought that was a copyright issue, not one where they actually think that such remixes are universally taken as fact. I wonder if the folks at the RIAA think that things like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are serious news programs rather than satire...

Filed Under: broadcast, tenenbaum
Companies: riaa

Dear Old Media: You Can't Delay The News; Nor Should You Want To

from the just-a-suggestion dept

David Carr, over at the NY Times, has a good column pointing out not just how silly NBC's efforts to block all websites from showing the Olympics opening ceremony before it broadcast the (long delayed) ceremonies itself was, but also how it didn't make much sense. Comparing it to the story last week concerning the Philadelphia Inquirer's braindead policy to delay stories until the print paper comes out, Carr notes the difference between viewing online as solely a "broadcast" medium, to one where much more is happening. For example, the stories Carr heard from his friends who got around NBC's media blackout resulted in him watching the official broadcast:

I was one of them, in part because as the day wore on, I saw all manner of oohing and ahhing on the Web from bloggers and friends who had peeked in and found themselves awe-struck. By the time the broadcast rolled around, my daughter and I had been nicely primed by the Web fanatics for what was, after all, a kind of epic movie made in real time that was best enjoyed on a big screen with good resolution.

In other words, rather than trying to block all the internet broadcasts of the opening ceremonies, just let them drive more interest in catching the full broadcast. He also points out that the internet isn't just a system for broadcasting content, but it's a way for people to interact with the content. That can be about promoting it to others (as people did concerning the opening ceremonies to Carr) or it could be in letting them contribute to the story, as others did in telling Carr's colleague about getting around NBC's block:

On Saturday, Mr. Stelter's wonderful article in The New York Times on how people were working around the blackout on the Olympic ceremony began as a post on Twitter seeking consumer experiences, then jumped onto his blog, TV Decoder, caught the attention of editors who wanted it expanded for the newspaper and ended up on Page One, jammed with insight and with plenty of examples from real human experience.

These aren't new ideas, but it's nice to see a media reporter from such a mainstream publication as the Times schooling other old media properties like NBC and the Philadelphia Inquirer in how it's done.

Filed Under: broadcast, delay, media

FTC Asked To Stop Bogus Copyright Warnings In Sports Broadcasts

from the stop-the-copyright-abuse dept

You may recall earlier this year that law professor Wendy Seltzer received a DMCA takedown notice from the NFL for posting a short clip to YouTube of the part during the Super Bowl where the announcers state the famous warning that often reads something like "Any rebroadcast, reproduction or other use of the pictures, accounts or descriptions of this game without the express written consent of Big Sports League, is prohibited." What got lost in the Seltzer story over whether or not posting that particular clip to YouTube was legal, was that her point in using it was to show how sports leagues were making claims to rights that copyright didn't actually give them. It appears that enough others have noticed this as well that a trade group, backed by various big name tech companies, is now asking the Federal Trade Commission to prevent broadcasters from making such "deceptive" copyright statements. The group is claiming that this incorrect statement that clearly reaches beyond the rights copyright provides, is harmful to consumers and technology companies. Of course, in the sports leagues' (and other content companies') defense, it appears that plenty of people ignore the bogus copyright warning anyway.

Filed Under: broadcast, copyright, copyright abuse, mlb, nfl
Companies: mlb, nfl