Malibu Media Seeks Order Forbidding Defendants From Discussing 'Copyleft' Blog Content

from the cf.-circular-reasoning dept

Copyright troll Malibu Media would prefer the many courtrooms it uses as speculative invoicing middlemen to be free of disparaging statements. To that end, it has filed a motion that specifically asks that certain blogs not be brought up nor discussed nor quoted extensively from by the defendant or his counsel. (h/t to Raul)

The Court should preclude Defendant from referring to copyleft blogs for any purpose, including specifically references to fightcopyrightrolls.com and dietrolldie.com. Plaintiff expects Defendant may attempt to reference these blogs at trial in an effort to introduce unsubstantiated allegations against Plaintiff. The blogs target Plaintiff and its counsel with vitriolic hate speech and contain comments that are biased, slanderous, and prejudicial, and should not be referred to at trial for any purpose. “Many internet blogs commenting on this and related cases ignore the rights of copyright owners to sue for infringement, and inappropriately belittle efforts of copyright owners to seek injunctions and damages.” Malibu Media, LLC v. John Does 1, 6, 13, 14, 950 F. Supp. 2d 779, 781 (E.D. Pa. 2013).

Yes, we can't have sites that expose the immoral and illegal activities of copyright trolls exposing the immoral and illegal activities of copyright trolls, can we? We'll just have to see what the judge has to say about this exclusionary motion. And in support of its allegations about the content of these blogs, Malibu Media cites a friendly footnote from one of its rare wins [p. 2] -- a derogatory phrase penned by Judge Michael Baylson and co-opted in its entirety by Dallas Buyers Club for use in its threatening letters to alleged infringers.

Rather hilariously, Malibu Media uses an infrequently-used term to describe these blogs, in an equally-sad attempt to appear evenhanded.

Plaintiff, Malibu Media, LLC (“Plaintiff”) by and through undersigned counsel, hereby moves for the entry of an order precluding Defendant Michael Harrison (“Defendant”) and his counsel from referring to copyleft blogs at trial for any purpose...

Sensing the court may not be familiar with the concept of "copyleft," it is more fully described in the attached footnote:

“Copyleft” is the polite way of describing an anti-copyright ideology. “Freetards” is the degrading equivalent of “copyright trolls” when used in association with copyright producers.

With this handy guide to the nuances of the copyright debate now on the record, the case can presumably proceed safely. According to Malibu, the blogs that have long tracked its legal efforts have "no probative value" and the mere mention of the forbidden sites may "provoke" jurors into browsing these blogs during their downtime... which obviously won't win Malibu any new fans favorable jurors.

All in all, it's pretty much a vindication of the efforts made by Fight Copyright Trolls and Die Troll Die. If these were nothing more than storehouses for hyperbolic statements and woodchipper discussions, it's highly unlikely Malibu would be attempting to preemptively banish them from court.

Filed Under: copyleft, copyright trolls, courts, freetard
Companies: malibu media, xart

Filmmaker Compares Copyleft Supporters To Anti-Gay-Marriage Advocates

from the then-i-get-to-compare-film-makers-to-blue-cheese dept

Oh, where to begin with this one. Once upon a time, in an internet far, far away, there was a Facebook page and a blog (that barely anyone paid attention to) masquerading as some kind of grass roots upheaval in favor of the copyright cartels. It was called Creative America, and man was it terrible. But, as does occasionally happen, this silly land of false statistics and incomprehensible logic bred some interesting discussions between folks on either side of the copyright argument. One of the participants in favor of copyright was filmmaker David Newhoff, someone who I generally thought represented his ideas and opinions with sincerity and class.

Well, to hell with sincerity and class. Apparently you damned pirates and copyleft people are just like homophobic anti-gay-marriage zealots...or something.

It all starts off innocently enough on Newhoff's guest post for The Copyright Alliance (Does that make us the Pirate Empire? But wasn't Han Solo a pirate? I'm so confused). We've got everything you'd expect from someone supporting current copyright, from the wilfully ignorant claim that "Copyright and Free Speech coexisted peacefully for the entire history of the Republic", to the invocation of names like Lewis Black as champions of free speech and free enterprise because Black is "entitled to make a pile of cash" because he's a master at speaking out against the government. Nowhere do we see any actual statistics to back up these claims, of course. There's no long-form history of copyright with big blinking letters saying "No problems here, people". Nor do we have any actual financial data on where Lewis Black has made his money. Was it from the real copyright product, royalties from album sales? Or was it his live performances, tours, and appearances? I certainly don't know, because I don't have that data. And if Newhoff does have that data, he isn't sharing it.

But no matter, because these opinions-as-facts are merely the foundation for one hell of a whopper of a claim: anyone who thinks copyright can threaten free speech is exactly the same as a homophobic bigot. Don't believe anyone could conflate two completely separate issues so badly? Read on, my sweet, naive little zealots:

"Their position reminds me of another First Amendment stumper: that same-sex marriage threatens the Freedom of Religion. As alluded to in one of my recent posts the Kantian principle that your rights end where they infringe on the rights of another is logically implicit, if not explicit, in the broad, human rights established in our laws. In a nutshell, society functions because most of us agree that your pursuit of happiness does not extend to a right to, say, drive an ATV across my yard and tear up the garden."

Here's the setup for the false analogy. You have a foundation of law driven by the Constitution, the "pursuit of happiness", mixed in with a little literal "get off my lawn" attitude, and a cool ATV thrown in to keep the kids happy. Just keep this setup in mind, because we'll get to the problem in a moment.

"The craftiest of gay-marriage opponents will argue that legalizing these unions infringes on their rights to be Christian in America, which is tantamount to undermining religious freedom. Yes, anyone with two working brain cells can recognize that this isn’t sound reasoning so much as thinly veiled bigotry...Similarly, the copyright-threatens-speech proposal uses the illusion of reverse discrimination to suggest that when the producer exercises his copyright, this somehow infringes on the consumer’s desire to reuse or “share” the work as he sees fit, which amounts to a “chilling effect” on speech. Like the same-sex marriage thing, this argument glosses over personal bias to foster a logical leap to a shaky conclusion. Copyright only threatens speech if we agree that the consumer’s right to reuse is more important than the producer’s right to treat his work as property."

And here's where this argument shows itself to be flawed. First, note the attempt to conflate copyleft and bigotry. This is all about setting up good guys and bad guys in the equation, and if you have a problem with copyright, it's "thinly veiled bigotry" and "reverse descrimination". Creators, apparently, are to be lumped into the same boat as other victims of bigotry, and if we can draw a direct line to homosexuals who have been descriminated against, it's an extremely short jump to slavery, interned Japanese Americans, or Jews in Nazi Germany. To borrow (INFRINGE!) a line from Newhoff's own piece, "this sounds dumb because it is". This is a discussion about economics, not bigotry.

Which is where we can point to the clear flaw in Newhoff's argument: yes, there's an argument that the "pursuit of happiness" should apply to all peoples, including the allowance of marriage. And it's also true that the "pursuit of happiness" can prevent me from driving an ATV onto David's well-manicured lawn. But unlike intellectual property, the "pursuit of happiness" was not specifically constructed and even denoted in the Constitution as having its key purpose be the benefit of society at large. The "pursuit of happiness" is personal. Conversely, copyright is supposed to chiefly benefit the public. Mixing these two aspects of our law is disingenous and the attempt to simply label the folks who don't agree with you as bigots is downright distasteful.

Filed Under: copyleft, copyright america, david newhoff, gay marriage, lewis black

My Challenge To Jim Urie Of Universal Music: Instead Of 'Drowning Out' Those You Disagree With, Let's Come Up With Solutions

from the right-and-wrong dept

Back in June, we wrote about a ridiculous major label astroturfing campaign, spearheaded by Jim Urie, the CEO of Universal Music Group Distribution, involving a faux "grass roots" group called MusicRightsNow, which is just a major label front group, connected to Music United -- also a major label front group. Well, he's back. As a few of you have sent over, Urie appears to be claiming that the letter he sent out back then is responsible for the new pro-censorship Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act. The new letter urges people to click a link to send emails to elected officials supporting the bill. Amusingly (but not surprisingly), the link in the email (which I'm not providing here), does not allow people to edit the letter. It shows you what you're sending, but the only text input is your name and address. Oh, and you can change the closing. It suggests "Sincerely" but you can change that. That's it. The text of the actual letter includes blatantly false and debunked statements like the following:

The theft of copyrighted works like music, movies, books, software and games is a devastating problem. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates such theft costs our nation's economy roughly $58 billion in total output every year; more than 370,000 domestic jobs; $16.3 billion in earnings; and $2.6 billion in tax revenue for state, local, and federal governments.

Every one of those numbers has been debunked. It's so sad that the major record labels are so hung up on looking backwards that they can't at least admit that they're relying on bogus numbers.

As for Urie's new letter, the really ridiculous part is the following:

Each and every one of us needs to act NOW if we expect the legislation to gain momentum. Our community has never matched the noise created by those on the "copyleft" -- we need to be louder than ever to drown out those who don't care about our art, our jobs and the difference between right and wrong.

How incredibly insulting and how incredibly wrong. The people that Urie is lying about here care very much about art and the difference between right and wrong. It's why we focus on new ways for artists to make money. It's why we look at what the actual evidence shows, including the fact that artists are making more money today than in the past -- in part, by getting out from behind gatekeepers like the major record labels. And this makes us happy, because we do care about art and we do care about the ability of musicians to make a living and to keep doing what they love doing.

Honestly, this is what bugs me the most. Plenty of us are working hard to help musicians make more money, and to create real win-win solutions that make artists and consumers better off. Yet, in response, those who have relied on artificial government subsidies for years, and pretend to represent artists when they really spend much of their time working to keep money away from artists, go out and claim that we're the ones trying to harm artists.

Rather than talking about "drowning out" those of us who are actually helping artists, I have an open request to Jim Urie: why not meet up and let's have a public discussion about how everyone can work together to create a better world for both artists and consumers, rather than going around falsely portraying some of the biggest music fans around as "not caring" about music.

Filed Under: coica, copyleft, jim urie
Companies: universal music

Spanish Collection Society Threatens Legal Action Against Group That Favors Copyleft & Creative Commons Music

from the the-attack-on-alternative-models-continues dept

We've already covered ASCAP's really misguided attack on Creative Commons and others who support allowing more choice and options for artists. When I was recently in Germany, I was told repeatedly that the situation there is much worse, with the collection society, GEMA, not allowing musicians who are members to even give away their own music for free (multiple musicians showed me their secret websites that offered free music, which they couldn't promote to publicly, or GEMA would go after them -- again, for offering their own music for free). It's really amazing how much these collection societies are against giving artists real options.

The latest example comes to us via Paul Keating, who alerts us to the situation in Spain, where the collection society SGAE is making a series of legal threats against the organization EXGAE, which promotes things like "copyleft" licenses and Creative Commons licensing. SGAE claims that EXGAE is infringing on the trademark on their name -- even though it certainly seems like most people can tell the difference -- and is especially pissed off that EXGAE mentions SGAE on its website. The key issue, it seems, is that SGAE says EXGAE is using SGAE as a "smear reference" and "undermining the reputation of the SGAE."

This seems like pretty blatant bullying. Trademark doesn't mean that no one can use your name without permission. And, if pointing out that there are alternatives to the way you do business is a "smear" and "undermining your reputation," you probably have bigger issues to deal with.

Once again, we're left wondering: why are so many collection societies afraid to give the musicians they claim to represent choice and options when it comes to licensing their works? As Paul also pointed out, it's pretty amazing when you think about the comparison. The industry regularly puts out misleading and false claims calling people "pirates," but EXGAE discusses more options for artists, and they're told to shut up or face legal consequences.

Filed Under: collection societies, copyleft, creative commons, spain
Companies: exgae, sgae

ASCAP Boss Refuses To Debate Lessig; Claims That It's An Attempt To 'Silence' ASCAP

from the you-and-me-against-the-world dept

We were among those who were amazed at ASCAP's misguided and factually incorrect attack on EFF, Public Knowledge and Creative Commons. ASCAP's Paul Williams falsely made the claim that those three groups were against copyright and against compensating content creators. Nothing could be further from the truth. All three groups responded politely to the bizarre and factually incorrect attack, and many ASCAP members who support these groups and use Creative Commons licenses expressed their displeasure with ASCAP for such a blatantly misleading letter. Larry Lessig responded with a blog post, again pointing out the blatant errors in ASCAP's attack, noting that these groups actually look to help content creators by providing them tools to better exercise their rights. In that blog post, Lessig also challenged Williams to a debate so they could iron out their differences and ASCAP could (hopefully) retract their false attacks on these groups, and focus on helping artists again.

Hephaestus points out that Williams and ASCAP have refused to debate Lessig, with an open letter that is so bizarre that I keep rereading it to make sure it's not a joke. But, apparently, it's no joke, and it gets more and more bizarre the further you read, down to the point where Williams suggests Lessig's request for a debate is really an attempt to "silence" him. But, let's start at the beginning:

Anti-copyright crusaders are currently engaged in a publicity campaign to discredit ASCAP's efforts to defend the copyrights of our professional songwriter and composer members.

Again, the groups that Williams mentioned (though, amusingly, he does not rename them here) are not anti-copyright. And the statement is wrong as well. The only thing people are trying to "discredit," are the blatantly false claims that EFF, Public Knowledge and Creative Commons are trying to undermine copyright or that "their mission is to spread the word that our music should be free." None of those groups makes any such claim.

The copyleft movement has encouraged a culture of disrespect for copyright by defending corporate and individual infringers; undermining every effort to provide more effective protection, no matter how limited or reasonable; promoting a reduction in copyright protection; supporting the dismantling of our rights through the courts; and questioning the basic premise that the tidal wave of infringements and unlicensed uses online hurts creators.

Well, that's one way of looking at things. Even if it's wrong. First of all, Creative Commons has done no such thing in "defending" infringers. That's just false. EFF and Public Knowledge don't defend infringement, either. They defend consumer rights, and advocate balance in how copyright law treats consumers. Copyright law in the US was always supposed to be about providing more benefit to society as a whole, not about protectionism of artists. That EFF and Public Knowledge get attacked for simply reminding people of that fact seems like a travesty. As for the final point: "questioning the basic premise that the tidal wave of infringements and unlicensed uses online hurts creators." How does asking whether or not a claim made by certain organizations is true or false undermine copyright?

Has ASCAP really sunk so low that simply looking to see if something is factual is somehow "undermining" copyright? Really?

Then, in responding directly to Lessig's debate challenge, Williams spends a few paragraphs talking about his own success as a songwriter, and how he now spends all of his time fighting for the right of songwriters to make a living. And, because of that, he doesn't have time to debate Lessig, because he doesn't see how it will "help" in this neverending fight.

Of course, this is ridiculous. Everyone wants content creators to be fairly compensated and to earn a good living. The EFF has even put together a proposal (which I don't agree with) to create an ASCAP-like setup for digital music. Creative Commons gives content creators more options in easily licensing their music, to make it easier for them to get heard and to use within a business model. As for Public Knowledge, just a few months ago I was at an event they put on, which celebrated various content creators and their success stories in figuring out smart ways to earn a living. And, of course, many others who are regularly derided as being a part of the "copyleft" are successful content creators ourselves, and regularly highlight smart ways for content creators to earn a living. Suggesting that any of us are against helping content creators earn a living is both false and extremely disingenuous.

And then it gets bizarre. Williams simply repeats the false claims that were clearly debunked by tons of people in responding to his original letter:

I am well aware of those "copyleft" mouthpieces who take a highly critical view of ASCAP's efforts to protect our members' rights. That will not change ASCAP's commitment to doing so. ASCAP exists for one purpose -- fair payment to music creators for the use of their music by businesses and others who seek to attract viewers and customers. ASCAP has long welcomed and licensed new technological means of performing its members works, seeking only reasonable fees for those performances. Our members have every right to give their music away for free if they choose, but they should not be forced to do so.

People aren't upset that ASCAP is trying to protect members' rights. They're upset that (1) ASCAP seems to stretch the legal boundaries to do so -- such as claiming that ringtones or the 30-second "previews" on iTunes are "public performances" that require a separate licensing fee and (2) that you falsely claimed any of these groups were somehow seeking to "force" musicians to give away their music for free. No one has ever suggested that at all. That's what got everyone upset. For Wiliams' response to simply repeat that blatantly false claim is strange.

And then there's this:

What I find most fascinating is that those who purport to support a climate of free culture work so hard to silence opposing points of view. They will not silence me.

Huh?!? No one has tried, at all, to silence Williams. In fact, people seem to have done the exact opposite. They've asked you to come out and talk about stuff in a public debate. That's the opposite of trying to silence you. No one has any interest in silencing Williams at all. We just want him to stop making totally false claims and attacking groups who have worked hard to support artists as well by falsely suggesting they seek to undermine artists.

Filed Under: copyleft, copyright, larry lessig, paul williams
Companies: ascap