Yet Another 'Rogue Site' List Proposed, This Time With YouTube Right On Top

from the wouldn't-it-be-simpler-if-YOU-just-got-off-the-internet? dept

Charlie, over at the MusicTechPolicy blog, asks a rather simple question: How many DMCA notices are too many? Specifically, he asks this question of an attorney representing YouTube:

I asked him a question that I now feel very safe in asking-does a million notice and takedowns sent to one service in 12-18 months constitute "red flag" knowledge? This isn't speculation anymore-YouTube must have received at least a million DMCA notices by now. Even if the site has a repeat infringer policy, should they still get a safe harbor if they seem to attract significant numbers of repeat infringers?

Charlie's point is that if a significant amount of DMCA notices are filed against a certain site, it should have its safe harbors removed. The YouTube attorney responded:

Well, you see, it depends on how large the service is.

Charlie doesn't like this answer, but the answer is fair. Yes, a million DMCA notices is a lot, but let's take a look at YouTube's stats. 48 hours of content are uploaded every minute. If we are generous and assume that each 48 hours is broken down into 10-minute clips, it means that YouTube is receiving 288 clips per minute, or 414,720 clips per day. A week's worth of activity would be 2,903,040 clips at 10 minutes per. So, a million takedown notices in the course of a week would indicate that 34% of the videos were infringing.

But Charlie is asking about a 12-18 month period, which would involve anywhere from 150,958,080 - 226,437,120 clips. (Again, we're still assuming 10 minutes per. The actual numbers would be much, much higher.) At this point, the percentage of DMCA notices filed versus total uploads slips to 0.66% - 0.44%. Looking at these numbers, one would assume that YouTube is actually doing very well when it comes to handling infringing uploads, especially when you consider that more than 120 million videos have been claimed by Content ID and that YouTube is scanning over 100 years of video every day.

But that's not the way Charlie sees it. All he sees is millions of hours of infringement, monetized by Google:

So if the "service" does a really good job of creating lots and lots of infringement but only gets caught a small percentage of the time, then that doesn't mean that they "knew or should have known" that infringing activity was going on. Even if that small percentage was over a million copyright owners who decided to send notices.

First off, Charlie misstates the nature of the "knew or should have known" question when it comes to copyright infringement. That phrase is only directed at specific instances of works, rather than general knowledge across the site. Of course YouTube knows that some users on the site infringe, but that's meaningless. If a company lost their safe harbors just because some users infringed, generally, then there would be no safe harbors. Just because a tiny percentage of videos on YouTube get DMCA takedown notices (which YouTube is notoriously fast in then taking down), doesn't mean the entire site is a rogue site... unless you're Charlie and are looking for reasons to mislead the public about YouTube.

Separately, "creating lots and lots of infringement?" As far as I know, users create the content and YouTube polices it. Charlie is trying very hard to drop culpability for the users' actions into Google's hands, despite the fact that YouTube, as was stated above, is scanning 100 years of video every day in a rather successful effort to minimize infringement. It's also monetizing 3 billion videos per week and working with "every major US network broadcaster, movie studio and record label" to keep its Content ID reference files up to date. In other words, YouTube has one of, if not the most aggressive systems of any online service provider in not just stopping any infringement it can find (sometimes, in fact, being too aggressive), but also presenting options to copyright holders, creating new monetization streams that were impossible before to artists.

Charlie has a solution, though, to deal with the Googles and YouTubes of the world, who are raking in big money thanks to the creative "work product of others that they can't hold a candle to."

Wouldn't it be more efficient for an artist -who wishes to enjoy all the extraordinary benefits the first decade of the 21st century is bringing to them- if there were some kind of ranking system for the really bad guys? A ranking system for copyright infringers based on DMCA notices sent?

I'm assuming Charlie means by total number of notices sent, rather than by any other indicator of ongoing and willful infringement, like a ratio or percentage -- despite the fact that a total number is meaningless in terms of noting how well a company deals with the issues. Instead, it looks like he's proposing another form of "rogue site" list, only one that is pointlessly targeting one of the most heavily traveled sites on the web; a site that hosts millions of non-infringing videos and is incredibly effective at blocking infringement.

All well and good, I suppose. He's got a take-charge attitude. After all, if you want something done, you've got to do it yourself...

There's actually nothing that would stop artists from developing such a service...

Or not.

...aside from money, of course, and time taken away from diligently monitoring the Internet for other "citizens of the 21st century" who are infringing their work. You would think that the Copyright Office would want to maintain it, too, so they could see how effectively the DMCA notice and takedown system was working. Or maybe even the Congress might be interested?

Oh. I see. Someone else needs to take care of this for you, too. Not only do the copyright maximalists expect their critics to come up with business models for them, but they also need someone else to red flag anything hinting of infringement solely for their benefit. The rest of the internet, these rogue companies "free-riding" on the backs of "creatives," need to be held accountable for their actions. And there's no one better suited to slapping a damning scarlet "R" right across YouTube's billion dollar chest than "someone else."

But not just any "someone else." This needs the touch of a Congressman. That way when web surfers wander into YouTube, there will be a DHS logo informing them that the road ahead is fraught with infringement, possible child porn and steeped in the blood of dying "creatives." Or maybe no one will get any further than the logo as the site has been seized due to a complaint about 0.66% of EOY 2011 Uploads.

Breaking it all down, it goes like this. YouTube hosts infringing content (current percentage unknown). YouTube also receives many DMCA notices. Therefore, the government should step in and slap some sort of arbitrary rating system into place solely to benefit the creative industries that are too busy to do this sort of thing themselves. And this should all be implemented because one million is a Very Large Number. Is that about right?

Filed Under: dmca, rogue sites, takedowns
Companies: google, youtube

PayPal Agrees To Help IFPI Cut Off Funding For Sites IFPI Doesn't Like Without Judicial Oversight

from the how-to-stamp-out-competition dept

Neppe alerts us to the news that PayPal has now followed the same path as MasterCard and Visa, in agreeing to the IFPI's plan to cut off payments to sites it doesn't like, without any judicial review. Basically, the IFPI will send info about sites it doesn't like (i.e., describes as "rogue" sites) to the London Police. It's not clear what sort of qualifications the London Police have on complex copyright issues, but okay. If the London Police agree with the IFPI (and so far, they have in 100% of the cases), the information about the sites will be passed on to the three payment processing companies, and they will no longer allow those sites to accept payments. Watch out, Internet Archive (which has been declared an infringing site by some in the industry), you may soon no longer be able to accept donations, thanks to the IFPI's fear of technology.

Filed Under: london police, payments, rogue sites
Companies: ifpi, mastercard, paypal, visa

US Chamber Of Commerce Continues Duplicitous Campaign To Conflate Counterfeit Drugs With Copyright Infringement

from the disgusting dept

The more I end up learning about the US Chamber of Commerce and their blatantly dishonest lobbying campaigns, the worse and worse that organization looks. They seem to have no limits in the depths to which they'll stoop to pass bad legislation that favors some of their biggest supporters. We've pointed out in the past how one of the favorite tactics of supporters of PROTECT IP is to conflate counterfeit drugs with copyright infringement despite the two things being completely different and unrelated. But, as long as supporters of stricter copyright laws can toss in some claims about how "without this, people die!" they can get what they want. So, here's the US Chamber of Commerce putting out a propaganda video about someone who died from bad counterfeit pharmaceuticals, and using that as a reason to support PROTECT IP.

I've said all along that I agree that counterfeit drugs are a real problem (though, it should also be noted that I'm only talking about actual counterfeit drugs, not grey market or parallel import situations -- even though many wrongly lump these together). And I would have no problem with actual efforts to go after real counterfeit drugs. But the fight against real counterfeit drugs is totally unrelated to the issue of copyright infringement, and it's not just cynical, but disgustingly exploitative of the US Chamber of Commerce to use victims of counterfeit drugs to helps pass a law that is really meant to deal with copyright infringement. It's like saying to the woman in the propaganda video, "hey, your friend died to protect Hollywood from having to deal with online innovation." Disgusting. I'm all for stopping fake drugs. But "fighting rogue websites," isn't about stopping fake drugs. It's about helping the entertainment industry block innovation they don't like and don't want to adapt to.

Filed Under: copyright, counterfeits, drugs, protect ip, rogue sites
Companies: us chamber of commerce

MPAA: Forget National Security, This Is About Internet Security!

from the it's-the-worst-thing-of-all...oh-wait,-it's-just-a-botnet dept

Just the other day, famed troll-magnet Marcus Carab and I were discussing my fear of diving too deeply into HTML code.  What am I afraid of, you ask? Well, because I'm an idiot, part of me believes that there is some kind of HTML super code out there that, if inputted into a simple blog post, would literally undo the internet.  Techdirt itself would simply fade away into dissolved binary.  It'd be a great disturbance, as though millions of lolcats meowed out in terror and were suddenly silenced.  Exposed Sony customer information would just melt into oblivion, leaving literally trillions of angry hackers with idle hands and too much Cheetohs residue on their fingers.

This, of course, is stupid.  But it's this kind of uninformed fear that folks like the MPAA play upon when they insist that so-called "rogue websites" are a major threat to everyone connected to the interwebz.  It's a scaled up political play, stemming from their appeals to nationalism.  Take a gander at what the MPAA’s Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Policy Officer Paul Brigner wrote on their website's (snicker) blog:

"Internet users who go looking for stolen movies online may end up getting more than they bargained for – a practically 'indestructible' form of malicious software designed to give cyber criminals remote control over users’ computers."

Wow.  Indestructible malware.  That's pretty effing scary, right?  You'd have to expect that this would be some kind of new holy terror brought down upon us by the likes of zombie bin Laden.

Well, from the Kaspersky post Brigner based his words on, not really.  It's a new evolution in a traditional botnet, one which requires less centralization and an affiliate installation payment program.  Hell, the writer in the post follows up with folks in the comments section with free software that can be used to detect and fight off the malware.  And keep in mind, of course, that these dire warnings are coming from a company that sells antivirus to protect against these threats.  But this is the launching pad for Brigner's conclusion:

"All the more reason to keep rogue sites from reaching U.S. consumers.  Stealing movies isn’t worth the risk to American jobs – or the risk to Internet security."

Somehow I'm not shaking in my boots yet.  Oh, and nice phraseology there.  Rogue sites reaching U.S. consumers?  I was unaware that these rogue sites we've been discussing the past few months were accessing users rather than the other way around.  It's a symptom of the problem that Brigner doesn't realize his customers are seeking out the sites when they should be seeking out his member filmmakers.

 

Filed Under: movies, rogue sites, security
Companies: mpaa

Drake Tells Universal Music To Stop Taking Down The Music He's Leaking

from the stop-it dept

It's been an interesting week for Universal Music. The company was outed for their secret war on various hiphop blogs, including some of the sites of their own artists, such as 50 Cent, whose personal site was declared a "pirate" site on a list that Universal helped put together. Now, super popular Universal artist Drake is lashing out at Universal for issuing takedowns over his own music. Apparently, like many artists who value the promotion, he's been leaking his own tracks to the various hiphop sites and blogs that Universal has declared evil. And Universal has been taking them down, leading Drake to tell them to stop: Now, as I'm sure people will quickly point out, he signed a contract with Universal, and that means he almost certainly handed over the rights to the music in question. To some extent, you can argue that if he was doing it for the people instead of for Universal Music, he shouldn't have signed a deal that gave all the rights to Universal Music.

However, even granting that, this shows yet again how far out of touch Universal Music is, and how its claims that it's protecting "artists" are full of it. The artists know how promotion works these days. Universal Music, apparently, does not.

And this raises a much bigger issue: as ICE continues to seize domains and the PROTECT IP Act continues to move forward, are these really "rogue sites"? After all, if the artists themselves find them valuable as a means of promotion, and disagree with their own labels about whether or not these sites are useful, why is the government solely relying on the labels' definition of "rogue" sites?

Filed Under: copyright, drake, promotions, rogue sites, takedowns
Companies: universal music

Top VCs Tell Congress: PROTECT IP Will Harm Innovation

from the good-for-them dept

While the entertainment industry has assumed that they would have a smooth ride getting PROTECT IP approved, it seems they've run into a bit of turbulence. We've already pointed out that both the NY Times and LA Times have come out against the bill as written and now a group of some of the most well known, and most successful, venture capitalists have all gotten together to send a letter to every member of Congress warning that PROTECT IP will harm investment and innovation. The list of people signing it really is a who's who of the top venture capitalists around. You've got Vinod Khosla, Fred Wilson, Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, Bill Draper, Esther Dyson, Brad Feld, Roger Ehrenberg, Eric Hippeau, Reid Hoffman, Tim O'Reilly, Alan Patricof, Danny Rimer, and many many others. In total 53 of the top venture capitalist signed on, and they don't mince words about why this is a bad bill:

The bill is ripe for abuse, as it allows rights-holders to require third-parties to block access to and take away revenues sources for online services, with limited oversight and due process.

In particular:

1. By requiring "information location tools" -- potentially encompassing any "director[ies], index[es], reference[s], pointer[s], or hypertext link[s]" -- to remove access to entire domains, the bill puts burdens on countless Internet services.

2. By requiring access to sites to be blocked by Domain Name System providers, it endangers the security and integrity of the Internet.

3. The bill's private right of action will no doubt be used by many rights-holders in ways that create significant burdens on legitimate online commerce services. The scope of orders and cost of litigation could be significant, even for companies acting in good faith.

While we understand PIPA was originally intended to deal with “rogue” foreign sites, we think PIPA will ultimately put American innovators and investors at a clear disadvantage in the global economy. For one, services dedicated to infringement will simply make their sites easy to find and access in other ways, and determined users who want to find blocked content will simply shift to services outside the reach of U.S. law, in turn giving a leg up to foreign search engines, DNS providers, social networks, and others. Second, PIPA creates a dangerous precedent and a convenient excuse for countries to engage in protectionism and censorship against U.S. services. These countries will point to PIPA as precedent for taking action against U.S. technology and Internet companies.

As one of the VCs behind the letter, Brad Burnham, noted in his blog post about the bill, unlike most of the support for PROTECT IP, this is not a "usual group" of lobbyists. This is not an organized group or a trade organization. This is a bunch of very concerned people with their finger on the pulse of innovation, who are quite scared of the bill:

Venture capitalists are notoriously apolitical. We believe in markets. We are not asking for tax breaks or favorable regulatory rulings, we are asking for restraint.

The group of venture capitalists who joined us in expressing concern about S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act ("PIPA") represent a broad range of political views. We share a passion for start-ups and a conviction that young companies are a fantastic source of productive innovation. This group is responsible for a significant amount of investment in the U.S. economy.

Unfortunately, chances are their pleas will be ignored, in part because they're not a big lobbying organization. However, anyone supporting PROTECT IP would be smart to take a look at who's speaking here, note that these are not the usual folks who speak up about what's going on in DC, and recognize that this isn't just a standard complaint. These are people who are legitimately worried about the impact of such a bill on American innovation.

Filed Under: copyright, innovation, protect ip, rogue sites, venture capital

Universal Music Goes To War Against Popular Hip Hop Sites & Blogs

from the bizarrely-misguided dept

A few weeks ago, leading ad firm GroupM, a part of marketing giant WPP, proudly announced that it had "adopted an aggressive new anti-piracy policy" for its digital media buys. What that meant was that it prohibited vendors that it worked with from putting ads on any of a giant list of sites that it had declared were "pirate sites" -- defined as "sites that support piracy or contain any illegally distributed content." That's pretty broad. In fact, TorrentFreak got their hands on the list and noted many rather bizarre entries, including the Internet Archive (archive.org) and BitTorrent's corporate page -- neither of which have anything to do with "piracy" at all. There are some other shockers on the list, including the popular web video site/YouTube alternative, Vimeo, which is about as far from a "pirate" site as you can find. Stunningly, there's also SoundCloud, which has become one of the most popular tools for musicians to promote their own music these days. That's the site where the Beastie Boys streamed their latest album. A pirate site? Are they crazy? You can see the full list embedded below.

While there are many oddities on the list, we wanted to explore one aspect of the list, which is that it appears to show that Universal Music has decided to declare war on the online hip hop ecosystem that promotes its music in a big way -- and some of those sites are hitting back. First of all, it's worth noting that these blogs and sites are considered instrumental to promotion in the hip hop world, and Universal Music knows that. In talking to some of the folks at sites involved, you learn pretty quickly that they get sent tracks and other promotional info from insiders at Universal Music -- including high level execs -- all of the time. On top of that, hip hop artists themselves regularly rely on these same sites, and link people to them via their own blogs and twitter feeds. And yet, a whole bunch of these sites are on GroupM's list... and they got there because Universal Music told GroupM to put those sites on the list:

GroupM's own content producing clients -- such as Warner Bros, Paramount, Universal Music and Summit Entertainment, which produced the popular Twilight series of vampire movies -- have shared their own lists of pirate websites to help create a master copy.

While I don't know which of those companies may be responsible for some of the other headscratchers on the list, the attack on hip hop sites is being pinned squarely on Universal Music by many of the sites involved, and they're not happy. Among those on the list, for example, is Vibe.com, the online site for Vibe Magazine, founded by Quincy Jones of all people, and still considered one of the key sources for news and information about the hip hop and R&B worlds. And yet it's on the list as a pirate site? Really?

Back in 2009, Vibe produced a big list of the "50 hottest rap blogs." This is basically a who's who list of the top sites in hip hop, and the places that most music producers want to see their music appearing, because it's how they get attention these days. Yet, if you run down that list, you start to notice a pattern. An awful lot of those sites are on GroupM's "banned" list. I went through the top 12 sites on that list, and seven of them are "banned" as piracy sites, despite being some of the most popular promotional vehicles for artists and labels alike. Also, a bunch of the top hip hop blogs teamed up a while back to form what was called the New Music Cartel -- and every one of those sites is on the "banned" list.

And, of course, that Vibe list is a couple years old. There are plenty of other top music/hip hop sites that for unclear reasons were also put on the list, and they're not happy about it. For example, there's Complex, an up-and-coming and incredibly popular lifestyle magazine for the 18-34 male demographic. Somehow, they're on the list, and the magazine/site's editor-in-chief recently took his frustration to Twitter, calling out Universal Music and saying this means Universal Music will get less coverage:
Other sites on the list are similarly pissed, though not everyone's willing to talk about it publicly. The ones who should be angry are the musicians who rely on these sites to get their works heard, to build up a fan base, and to become popular, because Universal Music is making that more difficult for them. There are mixed opinions as to why Universal Music is attacking the hip hop blog ecosystem. There's the "left hand/right hand" ignorance theory, in which the lawyers at Universal Music who helped put together this list are so disconnected from reality that they don't realize they're trying to shut down the very sites that the promotions side of the business (and the artists themselves) rely on. There's also the more nefarious theory that Universal Music is sick of having to rely on such sites for promotions, and is seeking to shut down a bunch of them to limit where it can focus its promotions efforts -- perhaps even trying to prop up a few "friendly" sites that it wants to rule the market, over the competition.

Either way, this seems like more evidence of how ridiculous it is to claim it's easy to define "rogue sites." Given the chance, it looks like Universal Music has defined it as sites it doesn't like. The fact that this list includes all sorts of sites that clearly are not piracy sites should give anyone who supports bills like PROTECT IP pause. Defenders of these laws like to say that it's obvious what is and what is not a rogue site -- yet here you have Universal Music and GroupM showing how that definition can be quite broad, and extremely questionable.

No matter what, it seems likely that this move is going to backfire on Universal Music in a big bad way. It's like what would have happened if a record label suddenly declared radio as "piracy" and said that its artists couldn't appear on radio any more. It suggests a company so out of touch with how people find out about new music these days that it has no business being in the business of promoting artists. It also should serve as a warning sign to any artist thinking of signing with Universal Music. Why would you sign to a label that is actively working to kill some of the best sites for promoting your music? I reached out to Universal Music, asking for some comments and answers to a few questions raised in this article, and (not surprisingly) have heard absolutely nothing in response.

Filed Under: blogs, complex, music industry, piracy, rogue sites, vibe
Companies: groupm, universal music, wpp

Son Of COICA: PROTECT IP Act Will Allow For Broad Censorship Powers, Even Granted To Copyright Holders

from the censorship dept

As expected, it appears that a new version of COICA is on its way, and it looks like those behind it have ramped up their efforts to make the positioning sound better. Rather than COICA, it's been renamed the "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act" or the.... PROTECT IP Act (don't gag). And, rather than actually taking into account the concerns many had with COICA, this new bill is even more draconian, in that it has a private right of action. That is, beyond just letting the Justice Department declare that a site is "rogue" and then getting a court order that would require all sorts of third parties censor that site, this new law will also let rights holders take action. That is, unlike COICA, PROTECT IP has a "private right of action."

The Act similarly authorizes a rights holder who is the victim of the infringement to bring an action against the owner, registrant, or Internet site dedicated to infringement, whether domestic or foreign, and seek a court order against the domain name registrant, owner, or the domain name.

To try to make this palatable, the bill says that the court's permission is needed to serve such an order (though, these kinds of things are frequently rubber stamped) and it will only apply to payment processors and ad networks, rather than ISPs and search engines. The DOJ version, however, can apply against ISPs, search engines, ad providers and payment processors.

Oh, and if you noticed that "search engines" included in there and wondered, yes, that's different from COICA as well. Beyond just requiring these other service providers from blocking service, this new law will require search engines to censor sites out of their index.

The bill claims it includes "safeguards," but those "safeguards" are that after the court order has been issued and all the third party service providers (payment process, ad networks, ISPs, search engines) have been required to block service to the site, the site can "petition the court to suspend or vacate the order." That seems a bit late in the process, doesn't it?

Since we've seen many of the "seized" domains simply move to new sites, the PROTECT IP Act also says that any site that just moves to a new domain, the same draconian censorship requirements apply to those new sites as well. On top of that, it pressures online service providers to voluntarily censor, saying that such services are "immunized from damages" for taking action against a site they believe is "dedicated to infringing activities."

Oh, one area where the law backs down is that it no longer focuses on seizing domains. That is, it no longer talks about requiring registrars and registers to be subject to this law. But the reason they've done so is because they say that Homeland Security's successful domain seizing means that such powers would be redundant...

Once again, what we have here is a terrible bill that provides for broad censorship power not just to the government, but potentially to private companies as well, against sites which they accuse of being dedicated to infringement.

Filed Under: censorship, coica, copyright, free speech, protect ip, rogue sites

Is It Time To Form A 'Rogue' Party Instead Of A 'Pirate' Party?

from the what's-rogue? dept

We've discussed a few times how important language choices are in the debate over copyright -- something that entire books have been written about. For years, the key term was always around "piracy." It was all about stopping pirates and dealing with piracy. But, some have noticed a gradual shift in the language, away from piracy. In fact, much of the debate around COICA has focused on "rogue" sites rather than "pirate" sites. Copycense and Glyn Moody recently had an interesting Twitter discussion on the topic, as seen below: Part of the discussion centers around whether or not this allows for greater conflation of copyright infringement with other types of infringement, such as patents and trademark/counterfeiting. That certainly sounds reasonable to me, though, I also wonder if part of it is the realization that condemning people as "pirates" just isn't effective any more. Part of it is that people have realized how ridiculous it is to compare non-commercial, personal file sharing to "piracy," and part of it may be the overall embrace by some of the term (e.g., "The Pirate Party"). Perhaps, for all the attempts to use the negative word "piracy" as part of the failed education campaign aspect, the industry is realizing it's time to move on.

Of course "rogue sites" seems like an odd choice as well. Is it really accurate or appropriate? The definition of "rogue sites," seems to depend very much on who's talking. I guess that's part of the beauty of it. It allows folks in the entertainment industry, for example, to label any site they don't like, or which represents a challenge to them, business model-wise, as being "rogue." It's "rogue" as in that it doesn't fit with the way the industry wants to do business.

And, yet, historically, if we look at some of the most innovative businesses in the world, they started off as being "rogue," as in going in a different direction and going "off-the-farm" with some crazy ideas. For example, a little industry known as "the movie industry," started out in very much this manner, running out to Hollywood where it could grow without having to deal with Edison and his aggressive patent enforcement attempts. Perhaps "rogue" isn't such a bad thing.. and maybe we should be embracing rogue sites and services, in that they seem to be driving innovation forward in useful ways.

Filed Under: coica, language, piracy, rogue sites