EU Says That, No, Rental Car Companies Don't Need To Pay A License To Rent Cars With Radios That Might Play Music

from the copyright-insanity dept

Performance Rights Organizations (PROs), sometimes known as "Collection Societies," have a long history of demanding licensing for just about every damn thing. That's why there was just some confusion about whether or not those with musical talents would even be allowed to perform from their balconies while in COVID-19 lockdown. And if you thought that it was crazy that anyone would even worry about things like that, it's because you haven't spent years following the crazy demands made by PROs, including demanding a license for a woman in a grocery store singing while stocking the shelves, a public performance license for having the radio on in a horse stable (for the horses), or claiming that your ringtone needs a separate "public performance" license, or saying that hotels that have radios in their rooms should pay a public performance license.

Five years ago, we wrote about another such crazy demand -- a PRO in Sweden demanding that rental car companies pay a performance license because their cars had radios, and since "the public" could rent their cards and listen to the radio, that constituted "a communication to the public" that required a separate license. The case has bounced around the courts, and finally up to the Court of Justice for the EU which has now, finally, ruled that merely renting cars does not constitute "communication to the public."

From the CJEU's press release:

... the Court of Justice, in its judgment delivered today, held that it is the case of the supply of a radio receiver forming an integral part of a hired motor vehicle, which makes it possible to receive, without any additional intervention by the leasing company, the terrestrial radio broadcasts available in the area in which the vehicle is located. That therefore differs from acts of communication by which service providers intentionally broadcast protected works to their clientele, by distributing a signal by means of receivers that they have installed in their establishment.

Basically, people aren't renting cars for the purpose of listening to music, and it's not like the rental car company is creating some special musical offering. They're just renting cars. Which have radios. Which might play music. If a customer turns it on and tunes into a radio station. And thus, finally, years later, we are assured that renting cars is not "communicating [music] to the public" for which the rental car company must pay extra.

But just the fact that this spent half a decade in court should give you an idea of just how greedy and messed up the copyright world is, with the various PROs/Collection Societies leading the way down the most ridiculous path.

Filed Under: cjeu, collection societies, communication to the public, copyright, eu, performance rights, pros, public performance, radios, rental cars

Ed Snowden And Bunnie Huang Design Phone Case To Warn You If Your Phone Is Compromised

from the busy-day dept

Bunnie Huang is having quite a day -- and it's a day the US government perhaps isn't too happy about. Huang has worked on a number of interesting projects over the years from hacking the Xbox over a dozen years ago to highlighting innovation happening without patents in China. This morning we wrote about him suing the US government over Section 1201 of the DMCA. And now he's teamed up with Ed Snowden (you've heard of him) to design a device to warn you if your phone's radios are broadcasting without your consent. Basically, they're noting that your standard software based controls (i.e., turning on "airplane mode") can be circumvented by, say, spies or hackers. But their tool is designed to actually determine if the radios are broadcasting for real:

The aim of that add-on, Huang and Snowden say, is to offer a constant check on whether your phone’s radios are transmitting. They say it’s an infinitely more trustworthy method of knowing your phone’s radios are off than “airplane mode,” which people have shown can be hacked and spoofed. Snowden and Huang are hoping to offer strong privacy guarantees to smartphone owners who need to shield their phones from government-funded adversaries with advanced hacking and surveillance capabilities—particularly reporters trying to carry their devices into hostile foreign countries without constantly revealing their locations.

They've published a paper describing the product and it's a good read.

Front-line journalists risk their lives to report from conflict regions. Casting a spotlight on atrocities, their updates can alter the tides of war and outcomes of elections. As a result, front-line journalists are high-value targets, and their enemies will spare no expense to silence them. In the past decade, hundreds of journalists have been captured, tortured and killed. These journalists have been reporting in conflict zones, such as Iraq and Syria, or in regions of political instability, such as the Philippines, Mexico, and Somalia.

Unfortunately, journalists can be betrayed by their own tools. Their smartphones, an essential tool for communicating with sources and the outside world–as well as for taking photos and authoring articles–are also the perfect tracking device. Legal barriers barring the access to unwitting phone transmissions are failing because of the precedent set by the US’s “third-party doctrine,” which holds that metadata on such signals enjoys no legal protection. As a result, governments and powerful political institutions are gaining access to comprehensive records of phone emissions unwittingly broadcast by device owners. This leaves journalists, activists, and rights workers in a position of vulnerability. Reporter Marie Colvin’s 2012 death is a tragic reminder of how real this vulnerability can be. A lawsuit against the Syrian government filed in 2016 alleges she was deliberately targeted and killed by Syrian government artillery fire. The lawsuit describes how her location was discovered in part through the use of intercept devices that monitored satellite-dish and cellphone communications.

Of course, at this point, all that exists is the paper explaining how this will work. They haven't yet built the actual system. But given Huang's history of hardware hacking and his relationships in Shenzhen, it seems likely that he could get it made pretty quickly if there was demand.

Huang, who lives in Singapore but travels monthly to meet with hardware manufacturers in Shenzhen, says that the skills to create and install their hardware add-on are commonplace in mainland China’s thriving iPhone repair and modification markets. “This is definitely something where, if you’re the New York Times and you want to have a pool of four or five of these iPhones and you have a few hundred extra dollars to spent on them, we could do that.” says Huang. “The average [DIY enthusiast] in America would think this is pretty fucking crazy. The average guy who does iPhone modifications in China would see this and think it’s not a problem.”

Again, who knows if people will actually end up using this, but it's still good to see solutions like this being explored and tested.

Filed Under: bunnie huang, ed snowden, radios, surveillance