City Of London Police Fail And Censor Their Way To A Lot More UK Taxpayer Money

from the censor-your-way-to-the-top dept

We've written plenty about the City of London Police and its Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), which despite an official jurisdiction covering a square mile of London, has made it clear that it considers itself Hollywood's private police force worldwide when it comes to stopping copyright infringement online. PIPCU has basically been a bumbling, censoring mess from the beginning. A year ago, it started ordering domain registrars to kill off websites with no court order and no legal basis -- demands that actually violated ICANN's policies. For registrars that ignored those baseless, bogus censorship demands, PIPCU started sending ridiculous threats claiming that they were engaged in criminal behavior. Of course, PIPCU's understanding of both the internet and "criminal" laws is suspect. The head of the unit, Adrian Leppard, claims that "the Tor" is "90% of the internet" and "is a risk to society." Another top officer, Andy Fyfe, somehow believes that if PIPCU isn't running around censoring sites there would be anarchy online.

Of course, it's not just crazy statements and bogus threats. PIPCU is actually causing real damage. It has built a secret pirate blacklist over which there is no transparency, no due process and no appeal. On some of those sites, it is injecting advertisements that are mockably ridiculous (though the injections are potentially illegal in their own right). Much more troubling is that PIPCU has been completely shutting down websites and privacy services with no legal basis at all. And, when they did actually arrest someone -- claiming "industrial scale" infringement -- the eventual details were so weak that the case was completely dropped in a matter of weeks.

Given the Keystone e-Cops nature of the City of London Police's PIPCU, you'd think that, maybe, just maybe, it would be time to disband PIPCU and let the City of London Police get back to protecting London's banks (its other main pasttime). Instead, the UK government has just given PIPCU a raise, dumping £3 million of UK taxpayer money into the group to continue its bumbling, censoring, technologically clueless ways. While I'm sure this makes some increasingly obsolete gatekeepers happy, it's hard to see how this helps content creators or the public in any way at all.

Filed Under: censorship, city of london police, copyright, copyright cops, infringement, ipo, pipcu, uk

NBC, Now Owned By Comcast, Once Told FCC It Should Break Net Neutrality To Force ISPs To Be Copyright Cops

from the oh-look-at-that dept

As you surely know by now, NBC Universal is owned by Comcast. And Comcast is one of the major players in today's fight over net neutrality. Comcast, of course, likes to pretend it supports net neutrality, even as it actually supports killing it. It seems worth wondering how the NBC Universal side of the Comcast family is viewing this current debate.

If you don't recall, NBC Universal has actually been vehemently against net neutrality for a long time, in large part because it's afraid that with net neutrality, broadband access providers wouldn't be able to spy on what users were doing, and wouldn't be able to throttle things like BitTorrent, as Comcast famously did in the past. You may even recall that, back in 2008, NBC Universal more or less offered up a deal to the broadband access providers: if the broadband ISPs agreed to become Hollywood copyright cops to spy on users and cut them off for any possible infringement, it would side with them in the fight to get rid of net neutrality.

In fact, in an FCC filing on net neutrality going all the way back to 2007, NBC Universal made it clear that it more or less wanted the FCC to force broadband providers like Comcast into being copyright cops:

What is missing from this debate – and from the Policy Statement and the Commission’s own commentary – is the acknowledgment that a huge and rapidly growing proportion of Internet traffic consists of stolen property and the concomitant recognition that service providers must act to stem the overwhelming use of their broadband facilities for the distribution of that stolen property. While the number of subscribers engaging in such activity is small, the impact on broadband service is enormous. The Commission should make unmistakably clear, as part of its regulations governing broadband industry practices, that broadband service providers have an obligation to use readily available means to prevent the use of their broadband capacity to transfer pirated content, especially when such use represents huge percentages of their capacity and reduces the quality of service to other subscribers. Whether those means consist of relatively low-tech but potentially effective steps such as forwarding notices to customers who have been identified as infringers, or using increasingly sophisticated bandwidth management tools as and when they come online, the obligation to deploy such measures must be explicit.

Now, recognize that many of the same folks in leadership positions at Comcast came from NBC Universal, including the author of that comment to the FCC, Rick Cotton, who was General Counsel of NBC Universal, but last year shifted to a new role, entirely focused on "anti-piracy issues." This is the same Rick Cotton who is famous for all sorts of misleading claims over the years, including telling Congress that piracy hurt the American corn farmer because apparently pirates eat less popcorn when they watch movies (I don't get it either). He was also one of the key driving forces behind SOPA.

And he remains a senior exec at Comcast -- the company that is both trying to kill off any chance at real net neutrality reform and which is famous for one of the first net neutrality "violations" in throttling BitTorrent users. Update: Comcast PR people have told me (somewhat snarkily) that Cotton retired this year, just a few months after the press publicly announced his new role (and while his LinkedIn page still lists him as currently employed at Comcast/NBC Universal.

If the FCC follows through and allows its new rules to be put in place, effectively killing off net neutrality, does anyone want to bet how long it will take Comcast -- driven by folks at NBC Universal like Rick Cotton -- to seize upon the opportunity to "monitor" your traffic and try to "use readily available means to prevent the use of their broadband capacity" for what Comcast/NBC Universal thinks is infringing (whether or not it is)?

Filed Under: copyright, copyright cops, fcc, hollywood, liability, net neutrality, rick cotton, throttling
Companies: comcast, nbc universal

Why Does South Korea Want To Turn Australia's ISPs Into Hollywood's Copyright Cops?

from the what-a-coincidence dept

Techdirt has been covering for a while how iiNet has doggedly fought attempts to make Australian ISPs liable for copyright infringement on their networks, and how Hollywood has been pressuring Australia's (relatively) new Attorney General into making that happen. The latest development, reported by Gizmodo Australia, is that KAFTA, the free trade agreement between Australia and South Korea, signed in April this year, mentions iiNet in the following section concerning its implementation (pdf):

Consistent with Australia's existing obligations in the Australia-US and Australia-Singapore FTAs, and to fully implement its obligations under KAFTA, the Copyright Act 1968 will require amendment in due course to provide a legal incentive for online service providers to cooperate with copyright owners in preventing infringement due to the High Court's decision in Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v iiNet Ltd, which found that ISPs are not liable for authorising the infringements of subscribers.

As that makes plain, this is specifically about overturning the court case that iiNet won, and forcing Australian ISPs to act as copyright police. That would be really terrible for iiNet, after all the effort and money it has put into fighting precisely this outcome, and bad news for the Australian public, which would doubtless find ISPs erring on the side of caution and taking down perfectly legal material.

But the interesting question has to be: why on earth does South Korea care about this? It seems unlikely that there is enough piracy of South Korean music or films going on Australia to justify the Korean government demanding a change to Australia's copyright laws as part of a free trade deal. The fact that this implementation requirement just happens to match exactly what Hollywood has been demanding for some time must raise the suspicion that the US has had a hand in this on behalf of its copyright industries. That's yet another reason for demanding real transparency during trade negotiations, so that such shabby deals can be exposed before it's too late to do anything about them.

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Filed Under: australia, copyright cops, hollywood, isp, kafta, south korea, trade agreements
Companies: iinet

London Police To Set Up Special Copyright Crime Police Force

from the hollywood-gets-its-local-police-force-in-london dept

It's really amazing how various governments around the globe fall sway to the bogus Hollywood talking points about how much copyright infringement is "harming" their business. Rather than recognizing that the situation is one where Hollywood's failure to adapt a modern business model is the biggest issue, or that (at best) this should be a civil issue, law enforcement groups have had no problem doing Hollywood's work for them. The latest? The City of London police are setting up their own "intellectual property crime unit" to deal with copyright infringement -- specifically looking to go after dowloaders. In other words, something straight out of Cory Doctorow's Pirate Cinema book, which happens to be our book club book this month.

The effort is being led by business secretary Vince Cable, who has sounded more reasonable on the subject in the past. But now he's setting up a private police force for Hollywood right inside the London police? And, even worse, he's pretending that this somehow encourages more creativity?

"Our creativity, our openness to and talent for innovation, is a key pillar of our return to robust growth. So it is right we work to create the environment in which creative, innovative businesses of all shapes and sizes flourish," Cable said in a speech at The Big Innovation Centre in London.

"A vital part of this is making sure the intellectual property landscape encourages and cements success and growth. The new vision for how we support businesses and consumers is central to achieving this."

Openness to talent and innovation isn't spurred along by giving one industry the ability to use the police to stop people from making mashups and being creative. It does the opposite. It creates fear among creative types and drives them further underground, rather than helping to add to creativity and culture. This seems like a big step backward for a group that had promised to take a more evidence-based approach to copyright reform.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright cops, london, vince cable

ISPs Will Start Acting As Hollywood's Private Online Security Guards By July

from the time-to-find-a-better-ISP dept

Last July, we wrote about how the major ISPs had agreed to a "voluntary" "six strikes" plan (really five strikes, but everyone calls it six...) to start acting as Hollywood's private online security guards. And, by "voluntary" we mean without any input from the actual stake holders (customers) and with significant pressure being applied by the Obama administration. Since then, nothing has been heard, but the RIAA's Cary Sherman has now said that the ISPs involved will roll out their plans by July of this year, a year after the agreement went into place.

Sherman says that the plan had always been to give them a year to deal with the technical aspects of setting up the plan:

"Each isp has to develop their infrastructure for automating the system," Sherman said. They need this "for establishing the database so they can keep track of repeat infringers, so they know that this is the first notice or the third notice. Every ISP has to do it differently depending on the architecture of its particular network. Some are nearing completion and others are a little further from completion."

Funny how, now that the plan is in place, the RIAA has no problem admitting that it required significant infrastructure changes. Somehow I doubt the RIAA is paying for this... meaning that you and I are paying for it with higher fees.

Of course, the real question is what this means for the non-major ISPs who have not agreed to take part in this anti-consumer plan. Will the RIAA and MPAA now start assuming that this is a requirement, despite it not being in the law? That's what they've been doing with content filtering on user-generated content sites now. Multiple lawsuits have pointed out that because YouTube and others have installed upload filters, everyone should have to. I'd imagine it won't be long until they start making the argument that ISPs that don't implement such a plan are "inducing" infringement somehow.

Filed Under: cary sherman, copyright cops, five strikes, graduated response, six strikes
Companies: riaa

Confirmation That Record Labels Wanted ISPs To Spy On Users And Report Infringement To RIAA

from the no-surprise dept

This is hardly surprising, given previous statements and actions, but a redaction failure by the UK government in a Freedom of Information document handover resulted in TorrentFreak being able to see how Lucian Grainge (now CEO of Universal Music) explained to Peter Mandelson (whom he was lobbying to create the Digital Economy Act) how they wanted ISPs to report directly to record labels on people who might be file sharing, so the labels could take legal action:

"As ISPs can monitor the amount of power used by specific users and the sites connected to, it is possible for ISPs to pass on any details to owners of particular rights, who could then take legal action."

This, of course, is the dream state for the industry, though they haven't been able to get anyone to really go that far yet. Still, it is interesting to see them directly bringing it up with lawmakers.

Filed Under: copyright cops, digital economy bill, isps, lucian grainge, peter mandelson, uk

Feds Respond To Rojadirecta's Challenge To Domain Seizures: If We Give It Back, They'll Infringe Again

from the do-they-not-understand-the-internet dept

Last month, we were the first to report on the fact that the Spanish company Puerto 80 had petitioned the US government to have it return its domains, which were seized, under questionable reasoning, by Homeland Security's Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) division. The government, who as detailed in that petition has been trying to avoid any kind of legal fight, first got the court to allow it to delay filing a response. But the time finally ran out, and the Justice Department, led by US Attorneys Preet Bharara and Chris Frey -- who have been the DOJ pointmen on these seizures -- have officially responded, claiming that the domains should not be given back or (*gasp*) infringement might occur again!

As we've come to expect with pretty much every move by the government related to seizing domains and censoring websites, this filing again suggests that the government is either taking questionable shortcuts in its descriptions of how things work, or (even worse) doesn't seem to understand the fundamental technology at play. The response first complains about the method used to challenge the seizure (calling it "extreme"), leaving out the fact that the government left Puerto 80 with basically no other choice, given its earlier actions and failure to respond in a timely manner to requests from Puerto 80's lawyers. From there, however, it just begins repeating some of the more questionable claims. For example, while it first admits that the files do not live on Rojadirecta at all, it still claims that the infringement occurs on the site. They do this in the same paragraph, separated by a single sentence:

Because the content ran on a live stream from another website, the selected show did not start at the beginning of the program; instead, the program ran from whatever particular point the show was presently at in the stream. Moreover, the event broadcast was shown in real time and was the same broadcast as the authorized broadcast of that same event. However, these broadcasts over Rojadirecta were not authorized by the relevant copyright holders.

But, that's wrong. The broadcasts do not occur "over Rojadirecta." The infringing content never touches Rojadirecta's servers in any way, shape or form. The main focus of the discussion, as in the original petition, is whether or not Puerto 80 satisfies the key points to have seized property returned. Puerto 80 believes it does. The Justice Department does not. It will come as little surprise that I side with Puerto 80 here, and find the Justice Department's statements on this point incredibly misleading.

The key point in the law as to when seized property should be returned is if there's little likelihood that the property won't be available for any future trial. That's the main point behind seizure laws and it's why we find this whole censorship campaign so ridiculous. It's abusing a law, designed to be used to stop the destruction of evidence, against evidence that cannot be destroyed. The second key point is whether or not keeping the property creates "substantial hardship." The government, of course, claims no such hardship. Stunningly, the government appears to not believe that stamping on one's First Amendment rights represents "substantial hardship." In fact, the Justice Department (who we thought were supposed to be interested in protecting the First Amendment rights of people) says that such prior restraint is not a substantial hardship at all. It also suggests that a First Amendment claim should be filed differently.

Even more bizarre is that the government seems to be claiming that, because it stalled so much in responding to Puerto 80's lawyers, returning the domain at this point wouldn't matter. Talk about circular logic:

Moreover , given the passage of more than five months from the Government's seizure, a return of the Rojadirecta Domain Names is unlikely to matter to the overall traffic the website receives.

Not surprisingly, the DOJ cites the favorite talisman of supporters of these seizures: Arcara vs. Cloud Books, which allowed the shut down of a bookstore because prostitution was taking place there. The problem is that Arcara explicitly states that it does not apply to activity that involves expressive conduct. The DOJ doesn't mention this, but clearly tries to get around it with the guffaw-inducing claim that copyrighted content is not expressive conduct (say what now?):

Indeed, it is clear from the record before this Court that the Government's seizure of the Rojadirecta Domain Names was prompted by enforcement of the criminal copyright laws, and not as regulation of speech or other expressive conduct. As such, the seizure is not properly viewed as a prior restraint. See, ~, Arcara v. Cloud Books, Inc., 478 U.S. 697, 706 n.2 (1986).

Next up, the government tries to claim that it shouldn't give back the domain, because Puerto 80 will simply use it to infringe again, and then makes some more questionable statements concerning criminal copyright infringement. Take this for example:

Moreover, Puerto 80' s attempts to liken itself to an Internet search engine is wholly unavailing. Unlike a search engine or other site that aggregates links to existing content neutral material on the Internet, Rojadirecta organizes links to very specific content in a precise and targeted way.

Wait, what? So any specialized search engine is not a search engine?!? Are these guys nuts? Google's book search? Not search. Youtube search? Not search! After all, they organize links to very specific content in a precise and targeted way.

Furthermore, the government lays out it's ridiculous claim that failing to stop infringement is itself infringement:

In linking to this content, Puerto 80's failure to "stop an infringing copy from being distributed worldwide constitutes substantial participation" in distribution of copyrighted material. Cubby, Inc. v. CompuServe, Inc., 776 F. Supp. 135, 141 (S.D.N.Y. 1991).

But that seems to go directly against the DMCA and general basic principles of applying liability to those who actually commit the acts of infringement, rather than third party service providers. The claim that failing to stop infringement constitutes substantial participation seems to go against substantial caselaw that argues exactly the opposite.

Next, quite incredibly, the government tries to make the case that the infringement is willful. This seems like an impossible mountain to climb, given that the Rojadirecta sites were twice found legal by Spanish courts. Clearly, being told by courts that what they're doing is legal would suggest that the operators of the site believe what they're doing is legal.

Finally, to prove "financial gain," the government claims that they have evidence that Rojadirecta earned "thousands of dollars since 2005" from Google AdSense. Um, wait, seriously? In six years, they most they can dig up is "thousands of dollars"? Do they not realize how much it costs to run servers for a popular website? The idea that "thousands" (not even tens of thousands) of dollars earned over a six year period represents "profits" is laughable, and (once again) displays the government's basic lack of knowledge about these issues.

Of course, courts do tend to grant the government plenty of leeway in these kinds of cases, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the judge reject the basic petition, but allow these issues to be raised separately in the separate lawsuit that the government filed... four days after Puerto 80 filed the petition. Yes, pretty much as we'd heard from various domain holders who had tried to communicate with the feds about their censorship and domain seizures, they were warned that trying to get back the domain would lead to a lawsuit filed against them... and that's exactly what happened here. This is a shameful abuse of power by the US government. It's a blatant attempt to censor websites prior to any communication or fair trial, contrary to the very basic principles of the guarantees of free speech or due process. All because some entertainment industry folks can't get their act together and understand technology. Preet Bharara and Chris Frey must wake up each morning proud of the fact that they've "protected" various sports leagues from having to give customers what they want, by basically trampling on the US Constitution they're supposed to be upholding.

Filed Under: chris frey, copyright cops, domain seizures, justice deparatment, preet bharara
Companies: puerto 80, rojadirecta

Entertainment Industry Get Their Own 'Piracy Police' In The Justice Department

from the thank-you,-joe-biden dept

Remember back in December when Vice President Joe Biden hosted a one-sided "piracy summit", ridiculously declaring that "all of the stakeholders" were present (despite there not being a single representative from the technology industry, nor anyone representing consumer interests or ISPs). The "stakeholders" were entirely the entertainment industry. And, even better, despite promises of openness and transparency, the press was kicked out so top execs from most of the major entertainment industry companies could collude talk directly with many of the top administration officials, including Joe Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and others. You knew that this wasn't just a random meet and greet and that something would come out of it.

And, indeed, less than two months later, we have Eric Holder announcing a special "IP task force" within the Justice Department designed to take on "the rise in intellectual property crime." Given how many former RIAA/MPAA lawyers ended up at the Justice Department, perhaps this is no surprise. But given that it now appears that the entertainment industry was able to create their own private enforcement division within the Justice Department without a single ounce of public discussion or transparency, and no input from those concerned about consumer rights or technology innovation, shouldn't someone be asking why the Justice Department is now functioning as a private police force to prop up the business models of a group of companies who refuse to adapt, even as plenty of upstarts have figured out how to make new business models work?

Filed Under: copyright cops, eric holder, joe biden, justice deparatment

EU To Explore Legality Of Virgin Media's Copyright Cop Software

from the is-it-legal? dept

With the entertainment industry pushing hard to turn ISPs into copyright cops, some are quite reasonably concerned about privacy rights. Over in Europe, a human rights group has asked the European Commission to do an assessment of Virgin Media's new copyright cop software, and the EC has agreed to "monitor" it. Virgin Media insists there are no privacy issues, though it does seem worth mentioning that the maker of Virgin's software, Detica, has a strong relationship with government and intelligence agencies, working with them to "reveal actionable intelligence," so it seems pretty reasonable to question just what Virgin's software really does.

Filed Under: copyright cops, eu, file sharing, privacy
Companies: virgin media

Verizon -- Who Promised Not To Do This -- Says It's Kicking Accused File Sharers Off The Internet [Update: Or... Maybe Not]

from the that-doesn't-seem-right dept

This one seems odd. Verizon is among the few ISPs that has vehemently spoken out against RIAA demands that it kick file sharers offline. When the RIAA announced that it was cutting back on lawsuits to work with ISPs, Verizon was the first to loudly proclaim that it would not participate. And this wasn't a huge surprise, given that Verizon was actually the only major ISP to fight the RIAA, back when the RIAA simply demanded names of file sharers without a court order. And yet... according to a Verizon spokesperson, the company has now started kicking accused file sharers off of its network. It's no secret that Verizon had started to pass along RIAA letters, but actually cutting off users without any court order or any proof beyond an IP address is a huge and extremely dangerous step. I'm hoping that this Verizon spokesperson misspoke, because otherwise Verizon may be facing a pretty massive backlash. Update: Aaaaaaaaaaaaand, let the backtracking commence. Verizon is apparently now claiming (to Broadband Reports) that it was all an exaggeration and that Verizon only said that it "reserved the right" to kick users off:

I'm not aware that we've ever terminated anyone's account for excessive consumption, although we reserve the right to do so. Verizon has no bandwidth caps. That part of the CNET story is wrong. I did not say "we've cut people off." I said we reserve the right to do so.

Update 2: And, again, Broadband Reports comes through. It has a new update with Verizon now claiming that, no, it has never kicked anyone off its network for file sharing accusations. It might want to tell its spokespeople that for future reference.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright cops, ip addresses, isps, three strikes
Companies: riaa, verizon