Greek Site That Links To Legal Videos By Rightsholders... Sued For Infringement

from the the-illegality-of-linking dept

TorrentFreak has the details on yet another ridiculous story of "anti-piracy" groups going way too far. In this case, it's the Greek Society for the Protection of Intellectual Property (AEPI), who has sued the site LiveMovies.gr for infringement, claiming the site is making available unauthorized content, and saying that it has "suffered damages worth 10,000 euros for each illegal act." The only problem? LiveMovies.gr does not link to unauthorized content. It only links to content that is being officially streamed by the authorized rights holders. In other words, they've set up a "TV guide" of sorts to legitimate online streaming of content. They've explained this to the AEPI who apparently can't comprehend that the site is only linking to authorized content, and continues to press forward with the lawsuit. In response, LiveMovies.gr is filing a countersuit against AEPI, claiming both fraud and perjury. Should be interesting to see what happens next...

Filed Under: greece, infringement, legal
Companies: aepi

Chris Dodd Memorizing Bogus MPAA Talking Points; Says File Sharing Ruins Community Bonding

from the say-what-now? dept

Well, it's been a little over a week since Chris Dodd embraced the fact that he was a liar concerning his post-Senate career, and embraced this by misrepresenting the biggest issues facing the movie industry. In that week, he's apparently been reading from the MPAA "book of propaganda" and is getting better at it. In a speech to theater owners, he's tied together so many falsehoods that someone might actually believe some of them! I've embedded the whole speech below -- it's really a piece of work -- but let's dig into a few sections.

Let’s begin with perhaps the single biggest threat we face as an industry: movie theft. At the outset, I want you to know that I recognize and appreciate that NATO members are on the front lines every day when it comes to preventing camcording. Further, I want you to know that the member studios of the MPAA deeply appreciate the efforts you make every day to stop the hemorrhaging of movie theft in your theaters.

Let's begin with perhaps the single biggest lie: that copyright infringement is "theft." It's not. Stop saying it is. It makes you look like a dishonest fool, who is in no way capable of actually helping the movie industry adapt to the changing marketplace. As for the "camcording" threat, the MPAA still loves to talk this up, but still ignores the fact that the real issue is industry insiders leaking movies themselves...

Nearly 2.5 million people work in our film industry. The success of the movie and TV business doesn’t just benefit the names on theater marquees. It also affects all the names in the closing credits and so many more –middle class folks, working hard behind the scenes to provide for their families, saving for college and retirement. And since movies and TV shows are now being made in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, movie theft harms middle class families and small businesses all across the country.

Those who steal movies and TV shows, or who knowingly support those who do, don’t see the faces of the camera assistant, seamstresses, electricians, construction workers, drivers, and small business owners and their employees who are among the thousands essential to movie making. They don’t see the teenager working their first job taking tickets at the local theater, or the video rental store employees working hard to support their families.

Yeah, this has become a favorite trope of the industry lately. About all those poor key grips suffering from movie infringement. Of course, this is also a lie. File sharing has no direct impact on those people at all. They don't make any royalties on films. They were paid (not particularly well by the MPAA studios, mind you) for the job that they did, and move on to the next job. Where they suffer is when the MPAA and its member studios fail to embrace smarter business models, such that they have trouble financing new movies. But, as we've seen, the box office continues to do well, and indie filmmakers who are embracing new models are doing increasingly well. Perhaps the issue is that the MPAA should be helping filmmakers understand and embrace new models.

But I guess that's just outside of Dodd's realm of expertise.

We must continue to work together, pushing for stronger laws to protect intellectual property and more meaningful enforcement of those laws. We must also educate parents and students and everyone else about the real world impact of movie theft on jobs and on local tax revenues, and on our ability to make the kinds of movies and TV shows people wish to see.

Fascinating that he claims this in the weeks after two separate, well respected research organizations both pointed to tons of evidence that stronger enforcement doesn't work. Nice work, Chris, you're parroting the failed policies of your predecessors, rather than showing any form of leadership.

After three decades in Congress, I have some idea how to attract the attention of a Congressman or Senator. When you return to your states, invite your local governor, state legislator, congressman and senator to your theater and fill it with those who work with you along with video store employees and their families. Tell them about the importance of these issues to you and to your communities. If you become that educator, you will leave a lasting and indelible impression on those who will make decisions about your future.

In other words, show them a good time, since the logic behind our positions makes no sense at all. However, if we entertain them for free, perhaps they'll feel indebted to give us protectionist, anti-competitive, anti-innovation policies that will help us wring a few extra dollars out of consumers, rather than innovating to add more value.

What I’m about to say isn’t quantifiable in economic terms. I can’t put a dollar figure on it for you. I can’t give you an unemployment number or some other gripping statistic – but as I stand before you this morning one week into this job, I want you to know that it is as important as all data you will have thrown at you during CinemaCon. Our lives are getting more and more complicated. We are increasingly connected to the world by the power of emerging technologies, but at the same time we seem to be increasingly disconnected from each other by the same technology and stream of information and distractions.

And yet, in the midst of all of this, if you drop by a movie theater in America or anywhere around the world on a Friday or Saturday night you will see neighborhoods coming together. You will see people turning off their phones and BlackBerrys. You will see families and friends settling in for two hours in a darkened theater. And even though everyone’s eyes are on the screen, it is somehow still a communal experience – unlike any other. The value of that shared experience crosses economic, political and even generational boundaries.

Going to the movies together as a community has stitched together the fabric of American society in a way that few other institutions ever have or could, providing a nation of incredible diversity with a common cultural vocabulary and a common understanding of ourselves. What’s at stake as we face these challenges is nothing short of the preservation and renewal of this quintessentially American communal tradition.

If I'm reading this correctly, he's basically debunking the entire first part of his speech. The thing is, that "shared experience" is the same thing we've been talking about on Techdirt for ages. It's why the movie industry shouldn't fear file sharing. It should be working towards improving and enhancing that shared experience, because that kind of shared experience can't be pirated.

I find it hilarious that Dodd appears to be suggesting that if the MPAA doesn't get stricter enforcement laws, people will suddenly stop wanting to come together as a community to share such experiences. Does anyone take this kind of thing seriously?

Filed Under: chris dodd, infringement, lobbying, movies
Companies: mpaa

You Would Think The Recording Industry's Main Magazine Wouldn't Copy Other's Works Without Permission

from the wouldn't-you? dept

Well, well, well. While I actually enjoy Billboard Magazine, and think that the current management there is doing some interesting things (and actually has a somewhat forward-looking attitude) even if they occasionally write bizarre hit pieces on me, it still is the magazine for the legacy recording industry in many ways. So I have to admit a bit of amusement in seeing that it apparently copied a blog post from Ethan Kaplan and posted it as a "guest post" on their own site... but did so entirely without permission from Kaplan.

Kaplan is being cool about it, saying he's happy to have it reposted, but would have liked Billboard to have asked him first. You would think that a magazine that believes so strongly in copyright law would have done so. But, I guess it's one of those situations where it doesn't seem like such a big deal when "we" do it. It's only when those dirty "others" do it that it's "theft."

Anyway, as with other thoughts by Kaplan, I highly recommend this post as well, though, you should probably read the original on his own site, rather than giving Billboard the traffic. The post discusses Kaplan's discussion of why it's time to kill off the shiny plastic disc (and how he once made that suggestion at Warner Music... and was rapped on the knuckles for it, since "the shiny disk still paid for my shiny servers.")

The crux of Kaplan's argument:

Consider for a moment the amount of supply chain management, staffing and processes in place just to produce a CD and get it out to third party retail. And consider the CD itself: a 74 minute bit conveyance mechanism that is pretty much disposable. They are often used just once: to rip the bits.

So in the end, the CD is this:

A once major source of high margin revenue which is now taking disproportionate back line expense to prop up, in order to justify the size of an industry which does not exist anymore. And even if that expense is not significant in hard numbers, the inertia it creates at the resultant diverted and stifled innovation sure is.

It's time to kill it. Bring it out back and shoot it. And then really take a look at what is left.

Go read the full thing (at Kaplan's site). It's well worth it.

Filed Under: billboard, cds, copying, ethan kaplan, infringement, music

8-Track Piracy Is Killing The Music Business.... In 1976

from the and-again-and-again-and-again dept

It really is amusing at times to go back and look at the historical moral panics by the recording industry over the "threats" of piracy. It's the same story every year, from the player piano (killing live music!) to the tape recorder (home taping is killing music!) to the MP3 player (illegal!). Sometimes such stories get lost to history, but Boing Boing has an amusing image from a 1976 record album sleeve, where the cover is devoted to telling people to fight the scourge of 8-track piracy. And I thought 8-tracks were the retro solution to "piracy."

Filed Under: history, infringement, music

ICE Arrests Operator Of Seized Domain; Charges Him With Criminal Copyright Infringement

from the is-there-secondary-criminal-infringement? dept

While Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) group has been seizing lots of domains under questionable legal theories, it has been slow to follow through on any sort of actual lawsuits. However, with one of the domains seized a month ago, channelsurfing.net, ICE has now arrested someone and charged him with criminal copyright infringement, such that he's now facing five years in jail (as well as fines). This is interesting, because when that domain was seized, we had noted that channelsurfing did not appear to host any content itself, but merely embedded content from other sites. That raises an awful lot of serious questions: specifically, what part of copyright law is infringed here. The site does not host any of the content. It does not make any copies. It does not distribute the content. All it does is put in a snippet of code that a user's web browser then uses to request content from another site.

About the only thing that could be claimed is some sort of "inducement" claim -- but as we discussed recently, there's simply no such thing as criminal contributory infringement, so if that's the claim, then it would appear that ICE (yet again) is simply making up what it wants the law to be, rather than what the law actually says. Now, there may be more to this than has been made clear to date. Perhaps there's evidence that the site actually did host content, but that was not clear from what I saw earlier. Some have said that there's an "aiding and abetting" charge to be made under criminal law, but as we pointed out in the link above, the standard for aiding and abetting are much, much higher, and there's little evidence that ICE has enough to meet the aiding and abetting standard.

On top of this, there are serious questions about why this should be a criminal claim, rather than a civil claim. ICE appears to be using the fact that the guy, Bryan McCarthy, made some money, from ads on the website, as the basis for the criminal charges. But that seems like a stretch (at best). While we still question why there should even be such a thing as criminal copyright infringement, even if we accept the idea that it does exist, isn't it supposed to be focused on those doing significant behavior where the connection between the infringement and the money making is clear and direct? Putting some ads on a website that earn a small amount of money (as is the case here) shouldn't be enough to trigger criminal infringement claims. Anyone can put ads on a website. That, alone, shouldn't shift liability from civil to criminal.

No matter what, this will represent a lawsuit worth watching. I'm always nervous that tough cases make bad law, and I could definitely see how certain aspects of this case could obscure the key issues. It will come as a surprise to no one that I'm greatly troubled by a criminal charge here, but it should worry almost anyone who has a website and has ever embedded videos. I have, for example, frequently embedded YouTube videos on this site -- and some of those videos might have been infringing. On top of that, I make some money from advertising on this site. Does that mean I now face criminal liability? I certainly hope not, but that seems to be the incredibly chilling message that ICE is sending. It immediately makes me question if I can ever embed another video without first getting explicit permission from the copyright holder.

Filed Under: channelsurfing, copyright, criminal, homeland security, ice, infringement

Tolkien Estate Says Just Mentioning Tolkien Infringes; Tolkien Censorwear Appears In Response

from the that's-not-how-this-works dept

We've been mentioning a bit about how the estate of JRR Tolkien has been overaggressive in trying to enforce (sometimes non-existent) intellectual property rights related to Tolkien. The estate has been like that for a while, but in the last few weeks it's seemed like the number of such stories have been ramping up. The latest one is particularly ridiculous. Boing Boing points us to the news that the Tolkien Estate has threatened a guy for having a button that merely mentions Tolkien: If you can't see the image, the button reads: "While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion." That's not infringing in any way, shape or form. Yet, the Tolkien Estate sent Zazzle (where the button was being sold) a cease and desist. Ridiculously, Zazzle simply complied. That's disappointing as well. In cases of obvious overreach, Zazzle should stand up for the rights of its users.

Of course, where Zazzle fails to stand up for its users, its users seem to be more than willing to stand up for themselves. A bunch of protest merchandise has suddenly been showing up on Zazzle, such as the following two shirts, which joke about Christopher Tolkien's desire to censor any mention of his father that he hasn't approved or been paid for:

Filed Under: christopher tolkien, infringement, jrr tolkien, tolkien
Companies: zazzle

UK Politician Threatens To Sue Football Team For Infringement If It Moves, But Keeps Its Name

from the does-this-really-need-a-lawsuit dept

While I'm not all that familiar with football clubs in the UK, here in the US when a sports team moves, it almost always changes the "location" part of the name to match their new location. So, when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, they became the LA Dodgers. That seems perfectly reasonable, but is it worth a trademark lawsuit? Reader Jamie, points us to the news that UK Parliament Member David Lammy (last seen here on Techdirt defending the idea of kicking people off the internet for infringement) is threatening to sue the Tottenham Hotspur for infringement if they move away from Tottenham, as the club would apparently like to do. Of course, what I don't understand is why the club would want to hold onto the old location after it had moved. Why would that even make sense? I guess the closest example I can think of in the US was the legal fight over the Angels baseball team, which went from being the Anaheim Angels (or California Angels before that) to the ridiculously long Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, to try to play up the LA connection. But, again, is this really an "intellectual property" issue? Perhaps a UK football fan can explain to us why a team not in Tottenham would wish to keep the Tottenham name.

Filed Under: david lammy, infringement, tottenham, uk
Companies: tottenham hotspurs

EU Commission -- Major Supporter Of ACTA -- Gets Dinged 12 Million Euros For Infringing On Copyright

from the all-in-the-enforcement dept

The EU Commission has been a major supporter of ACTA from start to finish, even pushing to expand it beyond what the US had hoped for ACTA to cover. So it's a bit amusing to find out that the EU Commission has lost a copyright infringement lawsuit and now has to pay out €12 million. The case itself is a bit ridiculous. Basically, the Commission had used some translation software from Systran. But then, the EC decided to find a new partner, and Systran went legal:

On 4 October 2003 the Commission published a call for tenders for the maintenance and linguistic enhancement of its machine translation system. The services required by the Commission from the successful contractor concerned, inter alia, 'enhancements, adaptations and additions to linguistic routines'; 'specific improvements to analysis, transfer and synthesis programs' and 'system updates', as covered by the call for tenders.

Following that call for tenders, Systran... contacted the Commission to inform it that the planned work appeared likely to infringe its intellectual property rights.

Some of the dispute was over what part of the code was actually the Commission's and which was Systran's (which sounds like the Commission needs better lawyers in negotiating software deals). In the end, the EU Commission lost the resulting lawsuit, and now needs to pay up:

Consequently, by granting the right to carry out work which necessarily entailed an alteration of elements of the Systran Unix version of the Systran software which are within the EC-Systran Unix version, without first obtaining the consent of the Systran group, the Commission acted unlawfully by infringing the general principles common to the law of the Member States applicable to copyright and know-how. That wrongful act, which is a sufficiently serious breach of the copyright and know-how held by the Systran group in the Systran Unix version of the Systran software, gives rise to non-contractual liability on the part of the European Union.

The General Court rules that liquidated damages and interest amounting to €12,001,000 must be paid to Systran to compensate it for the damage suffered as a result of the Commission's unlawful conduct

Why is it always the biggest proponents of greater copyright that get caught infringing on copryights? (Thanks to Igor Mozolevsky for sending this in.)

Filed Under: copyright, eu commission, infringement
Companies: systran

How ACTA Will Increase Copyright Infringement

from the it's-all-about-respect dept

Every so often, we get copyright system supporters here in the comments who, when they run out of arguments, go with something along the lines of "but it's the law, and it's your duty to respect the law." It's a rather authoritarian point of view and there are all sorts of reasons why that makes little sense. We don't need to go into the full philosophical arguments, but one key one is that you should never respect something just because someone says you should -- only because it has earned the respect. Glyn Moody has a fascinating post highlighting a new paper about ACTA that suggests the process by which ACTA was agreed upon has all sorts of problems. Moody calls out one paragraph in particular that I think is quite important:

there is the question of public perceptions as to the value and fairness of the agreement. A perception that it is fair as between stakeholders is important to IP law, which it is not readily self-enforcing. By this I mean that IP law requires people to self-consciously refrain from behaviours that are common, easy, and enjoyable: infringement is so easy to do and observing IP rights, particularly copyright, involves, particularly these days, some self-denial. IP law therefore needs support from the public in order to be effective, and in order to receive any such support IP law needs to address the needs of all stakeholders. 135 Treaties that strengthen enforcement without addressing the needs of users look unfair and will bring IP law further into disrepute.

This is a key point that gets ignored in all of this. When you negotiate agreements like ACTA in secret, leaving out key stakeholders, it should come as no surprise when those same people feel no compulsion to respect the agreement. They were left out of the discussion and so, in their minds, such an agreement should not hold any weight.

What this means, of course, is that the very awful process by which ACTA was put together may actually serve to create the exact opposite scenario that the drafters hoped to create. Rather than strengthening the power of copyright law around the globe, ACTA has only served to increase the lack of respect for copyright law, as the process by which it was put together has been shown to not be deserving of any respect, in that it failed to take into account the interests of most of the people it would impact.

Filed Under: acta, infringement, law, respect