Singapore Says 3 Strikes Is Too Intrusive For Copyright Reform, So Goes With SOPA-Style Censorship Instead

from the say-what-now? dept

I saw two headlines in a row recently about Singapore's plans for copyright reform. The first one sounded good, and the second one sounded dreadful:

1. Singapore decides 'three strikes' laws are too intrusive
2. Singapore proposes law to block sites such as Pirate Bay

It turns out that both headlines are accurate, though it's the second one that's the bigger issue here. You can see the details laid out (quite clearly) by Singapore's Ministry of Law. It notes that they currently have a DMCA-like notice-and-takedown setup, but have apparently decided that this is somehow too burdensome for rightsholders who have pushed the government to come up with an alternative plan (gee, this sounds familiar...). They don't seem to explain why this is so burdensome, they just say that there's too much "uncertainty" in having to actually "establish the liability for infringement." So, rather than do that, it appears that the Singaporean government is willing to chuck basic due process, and go for flat-out censorship without due process.

Under the proposed legislative changes, rights holders will also be allowed to apply directly to the Courts for injunctions to prevent access to pirate sites without having to first establish ISPs’ liability for copyright infringement. This judicial process is more efficient and avoids implicating the ISPs unnecessarily.

So, just as in SOPA, the idea is that rightsholders can suddenly declare that certain sites are "rogue" and courts can agree to wipe them off the face of the internet, by ordering ISPs to block access to them. The Singaporean government insists this won't be a problem for legitimate sites, because it seems to have bought into the Hollywood fallacy that what is a "legitimate" site and what is a "pirate" site are somehow obvious, rather than a spectrum in which nearly everything is some form of gray.

This is targeted at websites that show a blatant disregard for, and that clearly infringe, copyrights. Legitimate search engines and content sharing sites such as Google and YouTube will not be affected.

Notice how they just blithely insist that YouTube is legitimate. That may well be news to YouTube's lawyers, who just concluded (via settlement) a seven-year battle in which Viacom literally insisted that YouTube was the equivalent of a video Grokster (the file sharing service that lost its court case for enabling infringement). And that's where the real problem is. It's easy to claim that it's obvious when a site is legitimate and when it's not, but reality doesn't work that way. For years, many people were pretty sure that Napster was perfectly legitimate under the rules of the Sony Betamax ruling, but then a court decided otherwise. Similarly, many assumed that YouTube was illegal, until that case settled. Hell, even the VCR was a "pirate tool" until the Supreme Court ended that argument thirty years ago.

And, of course pretty much all of modern entertainment history is filled with similar examples of new innovations in the delivery and consumption of content that are at first deemed illegal, until suddenly they're not. The player piano, the phonograph machine, radio, television, cable television, the photocopier, the DVR, the VCR, the mp3 player, and many other innovations were first decried as "pirate" technologies. And then they weren't. But with the Singaporean government insisting that it's somehow obvious which ones are legitimate and which ones are not, Singapore is almost guaranteeing that important legitimate innovations that help move the industry forward will, instead, get censored and blocked across the entire country.

That's no way to present yourself as an innovative country.

So, yes, later in the document, they reject three strikes (and administrative, rather than judicial, blocking) as too draconian and intrusive:

Countries like Spain and Malaysia have implemented an administrative site-blocking approach where rights holders can apply for site-blocking orders from a Government-appointed body. Countries like France have introduced a “graduated response” system where individual internet users are notified of their infringing activity by the ISP, and can be penalised if they continue their infringing activity despite repeated notifications (or “warnings”).

We considered the alternatives above but assessed that they may not be suitable in Singapore’s context as they are too intrusive on internet users.

But, in many ways, the alternative "solution" that Singapore appears to be supporting is worse than three strikes. It's outright censorship against innovation, based on a faulty belief that it will be immediately obvious whether or not new innovations and technologies are "legitimate" or "pirates."

Filed Under: 3 strikes, censorship, copyright, injunctions, notice and takedown, singapore, sopa

EU Court Of Justice Makes Life Difficult For ISPs: Demand 'Balance' In Blocking Websites, But Incomplete Blocking May Lead To Liability

from the figure-that-one-out dept

While in the past, the EU Court of Justice has been more concerned about attempts to order ISPs to block access to entire websites over claims of infringement, late last year, we noted that the EUCJ's Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalon had suggested that it was okay to issue an injunction against an ISP -- with some specific restrictions to try to limit the serious issue of overblocking. While the court will often follow the lead of the Advocate General, and the newly issued ruling does appear to reach the same final conclusions, it appears to have done so slightly different reasoning.

Either way, the key part is this:

The fundamental rights recognised by EU law must be interpreted as not precluding a court injunction prohibiting an internet service provider from allowing its customers access to a website placing protected subject-matter online without the agreement of the rightholders when that injunction does not specify the measures which that access provider must take and when that access provider can avoid incurring coercive penalties for breach of that injunction by showing that it has taken all reasonable measures, provided that (i) the measures taken do not unnecessarily deprive internet users of the possibility of lawfully accessing the information available and (ii) that those measures have the effect of preventing unauthorised access to the protected subject-matter or, at least, of making it difficult to achieve and of seriously discouraging internet users who are using the services of the addressee of that injunction from accessing the subject-matter that has been made available to them in breach of the intellectual property right, that being a matter for the national authorities and courts to establish.

In other words, it appears that broader injunctions, which do not specify exactly what an ISP must do to block access, are allowed. However, ISPs themselves will then be responsible for "taking all reasonable measures" to block access, as long as those measures don't block lawful content. That seems like kind of a huge mess for ISPs who will now have to deal with injunctions asking them to block stuff, where they'll be required to show "reasonable measures" but will also need to balance that against blocking access to legitimate content. This decision seems to try to thread a needle, where the result is likely to be many new lawsuits as censorship injunctions are issued, and ISPs have to figure out how to balance the order without blocking access to legitimate content. It seems likely that many ISPs will opt for limiting their own liability by defaulting towards overblocking to avoid having to face challenges suggesting they didn't take enough "reasonable measures."

Filed Under: balance, blocking access, eu court of justice, injunctions, isps, liability

Innocence Of Muslims Actress Files Contempt Charges Against Google For Not Making Movie Completely Disappear Worldwide

from the well,-if-you've-already-fucked-up-copyright-law-in-one-way... dept

It would appear that actress Cindy Lee Garcia and her lawyer Chris Armenta are figuring that since they've already mucked up copyright law with their ridiculous victory in the 9th Circuit that they might as well go on pushing the boundaries of copyright law to further ridiculous extremes. If you don't recall, the 9th Circuit, via Judge Alex Kozinski found the actress had a magical "copyright interest" in the 5 seconds of Innocence of Muslims 13-minute trailer that she appeared in, allowing her to demand that Google takedown every copy of the video. Multiple copyright experts were flabbergasted at this ruling, and a variety of folks have been lining up to support future proceedings in the case (starting with a possible en banc review of whether or not the court should grant a stay on the ruling until even more review can occur).

In the midst of this, Garcia has filed a motion for contempt against YouTube and Google arguing that the company has failed to abide by the takedown order. However, as the details show, Garcia and Armenta are applying some rather questionable interpretations of copyright law yet again -- though they're interpretations helped along by a bunch of additional problems with Kozinski's order (problems that were mostly ignored given the immensity of the ridiculousness of the key parts of the original order). It seems that their main complaint is that Google only blocked the videos for people in the US. That is, if you visit a foreign version of YouTube, you can still see the clips. That may be true, but it's hard to see how that's contempt. US copyright law only applies in the US. The US court can't realistically order Google to remove the video in other countries, since US courts don't have jurisdiction there. Imagine the flip side: if a court in, say, China, ruled that Google had to block a certain video -- and then found Google in contempt for not blocking viewers in the US from accessing that content. Most people would flip out.

But Garcia and her lawyer seem to think that a single copyright ruling in the US is grounds for worldwide censorship. That's fairly incredible. Though, once again, Judge Kozinski is largely to blame here, as his order certainly could be read to suggest (clearly incorrectly) that he has the power to censor the content globally.

Google has failed to comply. As of this morning, at 7:55 a.m EST, a version of Innocence of Muslims that includes Ms. Garcia's performance is still available on Google's Worldwide Platform and also viewable in Egypt, the nation in which the fatwa was issued for Ms. Garcia's execution. All a viewer needs to do to view a copy of the video that contains the infringing material from any computer in the world and within in YouTube's global platforms--and therefore is governed by the takedown order--is to change his or her settings to any country platform, such as "Egypt."

That's not the only problem with the motion. It also seems to completely ignore existing rulings (such as in the Viacom case) that state that in issuing takedowns, you need to point to the specific instance of infringement, rather than just "make all of this disappear." That's quite reasonable, because content itself is not infringing absent context. There may be perfectly valid versions of the content that are fair use -- especially given the news interest in this particular ruling. But Garcia is insisting that Google has to proactively police all copies and block them -- again, thanks in part to Kozinski's overly broad language in his order that implies a duty to police this issue, despite the law not saying that at all.

Furthermore, the DMCA's 512(j) itself says that injunctions granted under it can only apply to "a particular online site," rather than some sort of global ban across every site in every locale. Kozinski, once again, seems to have gone beyond what the law allows in his weird quixotic quest to twist copyright law into something it is not.

For Google, it is a pedestrian, technical exercise to take down those URLs, to hire an intern to just search for "Innocence of Muslims," and their suggestion that Ms. Garcia should comb through YouTube again, and provide Google with the information again, belies Google's claim that it is in compliance.

While Kozinski seems to ignore this, the DMCA has never had a forward-looking duty to monitor and block all instances of a particular piece of content. It appears that Garcia and her lawyer are trying to simply make up new law here. As we noted just recently, there are some efforts underway to change the DMCA from a "notice and takedown" provision to "notice and staydown" but that's simply not the law today, no matter what Kozinski thinks it is.

The motion goes even further, insisting that the only way to comply with a takedown notice is to completely remove the file from the server, rather than just disable it from being viewable:

Additionally, as of the writing of this brief, Google has not "taken down" anything. Instead, it has merely disabled the various uploads displaying Innocence of Muslims in forms that contain infringing content, leaving the content up and viewable via thumbnails.

Of course, the actual law says that upon notification a company only needs to "remove, or disable access to, the material." Once again, it seems that this is another problem with Kozinski's overly broad order, which declared that Google had to "takedown" the content, rather than just disable it, even as the law has said disabling it should be sufficient.

Furthermore, the motion seems to suggest that Google has a further duty (not even discussed in Kozinski's order) to somehow block Google's search engine from ever pointing to the video anywhere else in the world.

Google has failed to remove full copies of the video from its platforms, has failed to prevent new uploads of the video to YouTube, and continues to publish on its Google search index platforms links to numerous sites and platforms where the video can either be directly viewed or where it can be easily downloaded and saved to viewers' computers.

So now they want to censor Google search results to other sites as well? Yikes.

Garcia also complains about the "snide" error message placed on copies of the video that were disabled.

Indeed, Google has not even made a pro forma attempt to comply with the order, choosing instead to temporarily disable only a few copies of the video that contain infringing content and putting in their place a snide message to the public that states:

"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by an actress over her 5-second appearance in the video. A U.S. court has ordered Google to remove the video. We strongly disagree with this copyright ruling and will fight it."

As is clear from Google's near-total disregard of the order and its ridiculing of the Court's authority, Google is thumbing its nose at the Court and making a mockery of our judicial system in an apparent attempt to encourage the public to blame and harass Ms. Garcia and to continue to use infringing content to generate YouTube revenues from traffic directed through the 852 URLs that have illegally posted the content.

Of course, all of Google's responses so far do not seem like "contempt" or "thumbing its nose," but rather following through with the exactly what the law says is proper. Disabling access to the known videos in the US. This is the same way that Google responds to legal takedowns in other countries as well -- disabling it for those countries only. And, yes, Kozinski's order could be read to demand further actions, including fulling taking down all such videos, even those outside the US, but those are just additional problems with Kozinski's order, which go way beyond what the law says. Everyone has reasonably focused on the ridiculousness of the original claim of giving Garcia a copyright interest in the film, and to a lesser extent the First Amendment-defying gag order he placed on Google. But, the details of this contempt motion highlight that Kozinski got a lot of the little things completely wrong as well, such as ordering Google to go way beyond what copyright law requires.

This is a bad case on so many levels, but it could be even more ridiculous if these kinds of precedents by Kozinski's blatant misreading of the law are allowed to stand. The dangerous precedents go beyond just allowing an actor in a film to claim a copyright on the film, but further allowing bogus "worldwide" injunctions and a requirement to completely "take down" content, rather than just disable access to it (which creates a whole host of other problems). Once again, it seems abundantly clear that Kozinski simply went off the reservation with his ruling, ignoring what the law actually says to satisfy his own desire to censor this video.

Filed Under: alex kozinski, censorship, cindy garcia, cindy lee garcia, contempt, copyright, dmca, injunctions, innocence of muslims, jurisdiction, takedowns
Companies: google, youtube

UK Continues To Censor The Press: Orders Wall Street Journal To Pull Details From Already Published Story

from the no-freedom-of-the-press dept

The UK's issue broad injunctions that try to silence the press from naming names of people accused of crimes. Given that, a court apparently ordered the Wall Street Journal to remove the names of bankers the WSJ had noted were expected to be named as being involved in the criminal manipulation of the LIBOR rate:

A British judge ordered the Journal and David Enrich, the newspaper's European banking editor, to comply with a request by the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office prohibiting the newspaper from publishing names of individuals not yet made public in the government's ongoing investigation into alleged manipulation of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

The order, which applies to publication in England and Wales, also demanded that the Journal remove "any existing Internet publication" divulging the details. It threatened Mr. Enrich and "any third party" with penalties including a fine, imprisonment and asset seizure.

Except, as the Journal notes, it had already published the story out on the wire, and while it took down its own web story, and is protesting the injunction, it's not at all difficult to find other stories that published the names:

In Friday’s U.S. edition of the newspaper, 11 names were printed, including former UBS AG (NYSE:UBS) and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) trader Tom Hayes; his former boss at UBS, Michael Pieri; and two former brokers at R.P. Martin Holdings Ltd., Terry Farr and James Gilmour.

And, of course, anyone who got the print version, which had already gone to press, could see the names as well: And, in the end, all this has really done is draw that much more attention to the names.

Filed Under: censorship, freedom of the press, injunctions, libor, press, super injunctions, uk, wall street journal
Companies: dow jones

USPTO And DOJ Shocked (Shocked!) That Companies Abuse Patents, But For The Wrong Reasons

from the it's-a-step,-but... dept

In a move that struck some by surprise, the US Patent Office and the Department of Justice put out an interesting statement arguing that companies need to stop abusing promises for fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licenses (pdf) for standards essential patents (SEPs). They argued, quite reasonably, that lawsuits over SEPs can stifle innovation and block competition. Well, duh. While many are interpreting this as having to do with the FTC/Google settlement, which touched on exactly this issue, the DOJ/USPTO letter seems much more focused on trying to knock some sense into the International Trade Commission (ITC) concerning how it deals with the patent cases it hears. As we've been discussing for years, patent holders get two (entirely) separate cracks at using the legal process to slap down those they accuse of patent infringement. First, there's the federal court system, which is what most people think of when they think about patent disputes. The second is going to the ITC and seeking to ban the product from entering the country (i.e., getting an injunction).

The ITC process does not follow the same rules or timeline as the legal process and so you could have a situation where courts go one way and the ITC goes another. Either way, an injunction via either the courts or the ITC is like a death sentence for a product, so most companies figure out a way to "settle" a case when it reaches the injunction stage, so it becomes like a forced license at a ridiculously high price. Thanks to the MercExchange ruling at the Supreme Court, the federal courts are much more hesitant to issue injunctions these days, but for the ITC it's the only remedy they have -- and while they don't always use it, they do use it often enough.

The FTC has lately been expressing growing concern about the ITC's somewhat cavalier attitude towards the impact of the injunctions it gives out, and this DOJ/USPTO paper appears to be another push against the ITC. The statement makes it clear that the ITC needs to recognize that it's core mission is focused on what's best for "the public health and welfare of consumers," and thus, when it comes to standards essential patents, it needs to take into account whether or not the public good is actually served by issuing an injunction.

This is all good and we agree.

But... why is this limited to SEPs? This is an all too typical reaction from government bureaucrats on these issues. They're all up in arms that (*gasp*) companies might use the government granted monopoly privilege to do exactly what it's designed to do: to exclude others in order to drive up the price and limit competition. The real focus should be on whether or not the patents themselves are what's best for the public health and welfare, not whether or not the FRAND agreements on the tiny subset of all the patents out there, the SEPs, are what's best.

The whole thing is somewhat comical when you think about it. The government gives companies the ability to exclude others via a government granted monopoly. It doesn't take a degree in economics to understand that when you give someone the right to exclude others, limit competition and drive up the price of things, that's what's going to happen -- and it's not going to be the best thing for the public health. But rather than recognize that crux of the issue, the response is just to focus on a core subset of patents, the standard essential ones.

Oh, and concerning the Google/FTC settlement, Google finally dropped its ITC effort against Microsoft. Honestly, Google should have done that a while back. Yes, Google inherited the situation from Motorola, but what an amazing statement it would have made about the companies position on patents and the patent wars if it had simply dropped such ITC actions upon the close of the acquisition.

Either way, all of this is yet another example of just how broken the patent system remains. And while it's nice to see the DOJ and USPTO at least paying lip service to the problems of the patent system, it's unfortunate that they think the problem is about "standards essential patents," rather than patents themselves, which create the identical problem for others.

Filed Under: competition, doj, injunctions, innovation, itc, patents, standards essential patents, uspto

As Expected, FTC Announces Close Of Google Investigation With No Antitrust Charges, But Minor Tweaks To Biz Practices

from the no-surprise dept

It appears that the rumors from last month were entirely accurate. The FTC more or less has admitted that it can't find any real antitrust problems with Google, but did get Google to agree to a few minor tweaks in how it operates -- which lets the FTC declare victory. On the big question of antitrust, however, which Microsoft and other sites led the charge on, the FTC came up completely empty, noting that the goal Google's practices was, in fact, to offer a better consumer experience, rather than to be anti-competitive.

The biggest "change" to Google's business practices is really from an issue they inherited: the handling of Motorola's standards essential patents. We were among those confused by Google's decision a year ago to continue Motorola's more aggressive practices with its standards essential patents, basically trying to get injunctions to block competitors who don't license at the (way too high) rates that Motorola was offering. This made no sense to us at the time, given Google's previous statements about the problems of the patent system. Here was a case where they had a chance to put their words into further action, and they didn't. And that became the biggest part of the FTC settlement. Seems like Google could have avoided a headache just by backing down initially. Either way, even the "settlement" aspect here is really small. Google has agreed that before seeking an injunction, it'll go to arbitration to determine what is a "fair and reasonable" royalty on those patents. To be honest, this seems like the kind of thing that Google was probably perfectly happy to "cave" on -- and it almost makes you wonder if they kept up Motorola's practices just to give the FTC some "red meat" to make FTC boss Jon Liebowitz happy.

There were a few other small changes, such as allowing sites to opt out of just Google News if they don't like traffic. In the past, sites had to opt out of all Google search if they didn't want to appear in Google News -- and some incredibly shortsighted news publications didn't like that. So, basically, now Google is giving them the ability to hurt their own traffic from Google News if they so choose. Also, Google will allow companies to more easily manage ad campaigns across multiple platforms, rather than effectively making them repeat the process for multiple platforms.

The end result here, even as the FTC declares victory, has to be seen as a big victory for Google. It made a few tweaks to its business practices -- most of which it probably should have done anyway (and some of which I think it should go even further on). And on the big question of "antitrust" and "search bias" the FTC came up totally empty -- even as FTC boss Liebowitz made it clear that he would have loved it if breaking up Google's monopoly was his legacy. As the FTC announcement notes, try as hard as they could, they just couldn't make the claim stick. I love the begrudging language they use here:

The FTC conducted an extensive investigation into allegations that Google had manipulated its search algorithms to harm vertical websites and unfairly promote its own competing vertical properties, a practice commonly known as “search bias.” In particular, the FTC evaluated Google’s introduction of “Universal Search” – a product that prominently displays targeted Google properties in response to specific categories of searches, such as shopping and local – to determine whether Google used that product to reduce or eliminate a nascent competitive threat. Similarly, the investigation focused on the allegation that Google altered its search algorithms to demote certain vertical websites in an effort to reduce or eliminate a nascent competitive threat. According to the Commission statement, however, the FTC concluded that the introduction of Universal Search, as well as additional changes made to Google’s search algorithms – even those that may have had the effect of harming individual competitors – could be plausibly justified as innovations that improved Google’s product and the experience of its users. It therefore has chosen to close the investigation.

In the end, this seems like a massive waste of taxpayer money and the FTC's time and resources. While the announcement claims they got Google to agree to "significant" changes in its business practices, that's a laughable claim when you look at the details.

Filed Under: antitrust, bias, ftc, injunctions, jon liebowitz, patents, search, search bias, search neutrality, standards essential patents
Companies: google

Judge: Apple / HTC Patent Agreement Must Be Revealed (Except For Dollar Amount)

from the so-we-shall-see dept

Last month, we wrote about Apple and HTC settling their ongoing patent dispute, and the subsequent request by Samsung to see the details, which were being kept confidential. It wasn't so much the amount paid that interested Samsung, but which patents were included in the settlement. That's because, in the Apple/Samsung case, Apple has argued that it would never license some of its patents, and thus there should be an injunction banning the sale of certain Samsung devices. However, if those same patents are found in the HTC agreement... then Samsung can point out that, not only is Apple lying to the court, but that an injunction should be off the table. That's because the law suggests injunctions only make sense when there is "irreparable harm." And if you can just pay up the missed license fees, then it's clearly not "irreparable."

The court quickly granted Samsung's request and has now gone a step further, saying that the agreement itself should be made public, except for pricing and royalty terms. Bizarrely, it was actually Samsung who sought to have the information about what patents were included under seal -- such that it could see it, but the public could not. Either way, the judge has made it clear that the patents need to be made public as there's no compelling interest in keeping them secret.

Filed Under: injunctions, patents, settlement
Companies: apple, htc, samsung

Planet Money Explores 'How To Fix The Patent Mess'

from the in-case-of-emergency,-call-mark-lemley dept

In something of a follow up to This American Life's famous episode about the horrors of software patents, the Planet Money team brought on Mark Lemley to talk about how to fix the patent system. If you're aware of Lemley (or read Techdirt) what he talks about isn't all that surprising. He does note that, even if software patents are particularly silly, he doesn't agree with trying to carve them out specifically. Instead, he's still mostly focused on fixing the patent system by properly enforcing the laws already on the books. That means having the USPTO and the courts actually recognize that too many software patents are on general ideas ("functional claiming") when that's not allowed.

Next, the courts and the USPTO need to get much better at rejecting patents for obviousness. He doesn't quite get into how to do this, though I'm still a big fan of using independent invention as a sign of obviousness. He does note that the KSR case (which isn't named in the story) helped move the needle just slightly in the right direction. In that case, the court noted that merely combining two existing inventions is obvious. From there, he suggests recognizing how many patents stack up into an existing innovation -- and what that means. So, using the 250,000 patents in a smartphone as an example, he notes that it's ridiculous for any one patent to hold up innovation in such a scenario, pointing to the MercExchange ruling (again, not named) that said the courts shouldn't issue automatic injunctions for infringement. In other words, when you have 250,000 patents in a smartphone, infringing on one shouldn't hold up the entire device.

The last bit, which still needs work, is fixing damages. Again, using the smartphone example, he points out that when you have 250,000 patents, you can't claim that each patent deserves 5% of the revenue. Otherwise, you don't have smartphones anymore. Of course, fixing damages is still a work in progress. Congress tried to do it with the patent reform bill that was debated for about seven years -- and patent system supporters hit back hard on damages reform, such that the real fixes didn't make it into the final bill. The hope is that the courts will take care of it, but that still seems like a crapshoot.

Filed Under: damages, fixes, functional claiming, injunctions, mark lemley, patents, software patents

Google Launches Patent Attack On Apple In A Disappointing First For The Company

from the double-standards dept

For years, despite being the defendant in tons of patent suits, and despite having a decent patent portfolio of its own, Google had never gone on the offensive with its patents against others. With the purchase of Motorola Mobility, it inherited an ongoing court case against Apple, which was unceremoniously dumped by Judge Posner. However, now there's news that Motorola Mobility has gone to the ITC to seek an injunction against Apple for the iPhone, iPad and some of its computers as well. Filing at the ITC can only lead to an injunction, rather than monetary damages, but the threat of an injunction is pretty big no matter what, and can often force a company to pay up.

What's disappointing here is that, even though this is coming from the Motorola side of things, as far as I can tell, it's the first time that Google itself could be described as a patent aggressor. For a company that had been coming out vocally about just how broken the patent system was, and which seemed to be fighting the good fight on stopping such abuses of patents to block competition, this is disappointing.

Yes, it's typical for companies, as they get bigger, older and less innovative, to start becoming patent aggressors, but Google had kept away from doing so for a long time, and certainly appeared, publicly, to have no interest in going down this road. Combined with the company's recent decision to cave on copyright issues as well, it seems that Google is taking some dangerous steps around copyright and patent law -- both of which may go against its own long-term best interests.

Filed Under: android, injunctions, ios, itc, patents, smartphones
Companies: apple, google, motorola mobility

Insane Entitlement: EMI Sues Irish Gov't For Not Passing SOPA-Like Censorship Law

from the wowzers dept

The sense of entitlement exhibited by the legacy players in the entertainment industry is now reaching positively insane levels -- highlighted by the news that major record label EMI (in the process of being acquired by Universal Music to make it the largest record label by far) is suing the Irish government because it feels the Irish government is taking too long to pass a SOPA-like law that would require ISPs to censor the internet and block access to sites it doesn't like. I'm not kidding. Apparently, because the legislative process is too slow, it feels the need to sue.

In another article on the lawsuit, EMI Ireland's CEO complains that the length of time it's taking the government to craft such a censorship bill is "leading me to believe it’s unlikely to satisfy the music industry’s requirement for injunctive relief."

Think about that for a second. The major record labels have such an insane sense of entitlement, they think that any bill they declare that they "require" must become law, or they can sue the government. More specifically, EMI is effectively confessing here that it's upset that the government isn't sharing the bill ahead of time with EMI or others in the industry. Again, the massive sense of entitlement of these guys is such that they expect that they get to write the laws, and when they're left out of the process, they get to sue over it. And yet, on every one of these laws, the people actually impacted by them -- the public -- get no real say or can't see them. Remember ACTA? The public was left totally in the dark, while RIAA/MPAA officials and others had pretty detailed access and the ability to help craft the bills. And yet, when EMI doesn't get to see a draft of a bill, and it makes them think that it won't go the way they want, they sue? Damn.

Filed Under: blocking, copyright, entitlement, injunctions, ireland, pipa, protect ip, record labels, sopa
Companies: emi, riaa