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A federal trial judge in San Francisco presiding over the Napster copyright litigation has just clarified that the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005 does not establish that the operator of a peer-to-peer Internet file-sharing service who maintains and posts on the Internet an index of downloadable files embodying copyrighted sound recording and musical compositions infringes on the copyright owners' distribution rights.
The focus of the meeting was on international copyright infringement, particularly in China and Russia. Flash! There is lots of infringement in these two countries and something must be done about it, such as keeping Russia out of the WTO. And we're really going to get upset with China pretty darn soon. Any minute now, in fact. Just you wait, we'll do something major to China, you'll see
Originally argued in April 2003, the case wended its way through federal district and circuit courts, until the Supreme Court agreed to hear it in December 2004. In each lower court decision, judges had ruled in favor of the defendants, stating that the service could not be shut down. Their reasoning was that "substantial non-infringing uses" of Grokster exist, citing the 1984 Sony Corp. v. Universal Studios ruling that found that VCR manufacturers couldn't be held liable for any illegal copying done by users.
This rapidly changing technology environment is best addressed by Congress," says EFF's Seltzer. "If Congress thinks copyright needs to be changed to address specific technology issues, it can address that in a number of ways. For example, it can create compulsory licenses or royalty pools...But the courts can only say there's liability or no liability."
While other lawmakers have long-standing relationships with the entertainment industry, whose chief concern is piracy, Boucher sees his pro-technology policies as a way to further education, communication and job creation. Boucher, a Democrat representing the rural 9th District of Virginia, has introduced a bill to restore some of the fair-use rights taken away by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The U.S. Department of Justice is quietly shopping around the explosive idea of requiring Internet service providers to retain records of their customers' online activities. Data retention rules could permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity months after Internet providers ordinarily would have deleted the logs--that is, if logs were ever kept in the first place. No U.S. law currently mandates that such logs be kept
The Duke University student had had his first run-in with a technology that record companies are using to limit the number of times users can burn, or make extra copies of, CDs. The new content-protected disc, which is not yet compatible with the iPod, is the recording industry's latest strategy to curb the illegal spread of music. This time, the crackdown is on the CD purchased at your local music shop -- the last bastion consumers held in freely sharing legally bought music.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been wreaking havoc on consumers' fair use rights for the past seven years. Now Congress is considering the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (DMCRA, HR 1201), a bill that would reform part of the DMCA and formally protect the "Betamax defense" relied on by so many innovators.HR 1201 would give citizens the right to circumvent copy-protection measures as long as what they're doing is otherwise legal. For example, it would make sure that when you buy a CD, whether it is copy-protected or not, you can record it onto your computer and move the songs to an MP3 player. It would also protect a computer science professor who needs to bypass copy-protection to evaluate encryption technology. In addition, the bill would codify the Betamax defense, which has been under attack by the entertainment industries in the "INDUCE Act" last year and the MGM v. Grokster case currently before the Supreme Court. This kind of sanity would be a welcome change to our copyright law
This attack from the film and music industry is an attack on competition. By attempting to constrict modes of distribution, the industry is attempting to maintain their near monopolistic control over the prices consumers pay and the choices consumers make. For example, by maintaining artificially inflated prices for compact discs while simultaneously rejecting newer, cheaper distribution technologies, the industry reaps huge financial gains at the expense of consumer and technological progress. We suspect that the recording industry and movie studios will use this decision to continue to resist adapting their business models to the new technology. Moreover, they are likely to ask Congress to shut these networks down by creating a surveillance society that requires technologies to fingerprint every file, tag every user, and monitor every transaction.
On June 24th title 18, Section 2257 of the U.S. Code, created under the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act, took effect. For a background on this section, that threatens to swap pornography and other (explicit) sexual depictions into the realm of child pornography, see this earlier post. Section 2257 will not be enforced until September 7th due to a stipulation between the US Department of Justice and the Free Speech Coalition, which challenges the regulations in court
US album sales showed some positive signs last week, moving up 6.6 percent over the previous period. According to data from Nielsen Soundscan, retailers shifted a total of 10.9 million units for the week leading up to the July 4th holiday. That compares favorably to a previous week tally of to 10.2 million units. The improved total was aided by debuts from both George Straight (244,783 units) and the Ying Yang Twins (201,478 units), while both Coldplay (140,268) and Mariah Carey (130,571) held steady. While the figures are somewhat encouraging, they still compare unfavorably to the same period last year by 2.7 percent. And overall, cumulative 2005 totals are trailing considerably behind comparable 2004 levels by a 7.56 percent gap.
The four men were arrested in June as part of Operation Copycat, which itself is part of a larger international law enforcement Internet piracy crackdown known as Operation Site Down. A federal grand jury indicted the men on multiple felony charges on Wednesday.Operation Copycat targeted "warez" groups, which prosecutors say are the source of the majority of pirated movies, music and software distributed and downloaded on the Internet. Once a warez release group prepares a stolen work for distribution, the material is distributed in minutes to secure servers throughout the world. From there, within a matter of hours, the pirated works are distributed globally, filtering down to peer-to-peer and other public file-sharing networks accessible to anyone with Internet access, according to federal authorities
I suppose all of the companies being ripped off gave thier permission for the FBI to distribute their cracked software ?I dont think so ... :twisted:
President Bush has created a new senior-level position to fight global intellectual-property piracy and counterfeiting that cost American companies billions of dollars each year, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said Friday. "Intellectual-property theft is a major problem around the world. We believe that it is costing U.S. businesses about $250 billion in lost sales," Gutierrez told Reuters in an interview with reporters and editors.
The MPAA is well on its way to eradicating movie piracy online. While the trade organization initiated the enforcement of its intellectual property rights in November-December 2004, it has ramped up its efforts by announcing lawsuits on behalf of its member companies against four individuals in Waco, Texas.Unfortunately for the four ,they did not answer the initial notification. These four were using Kazaa, LimeWire and BearShare to share and distribute movies.Since the four did not answer the initial notification, they are now looking at lawsuit valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars - if not millions
Acting Assistant Attorney General John C. Richter of the Criminal Division; Gretchen C. F. Shappert, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina; and Robert F. Clifford, FBI Acting Special Agent-in-Charge of the Charlotte Division, today announced that eight individuals were charged with criminal copyright infringement in Charlotte, North Carolina, as part of an ongoing federal crackdown against the organized piracy groups responsible for most of the illegal distribution of copyrighted movies, software, games and music on the Internet. These are the first federal indictments arising from the Charlotte-based FBI investigation that identified targets in both Operations FastLink and Site Down - the two largest and most aggressive international enforcement actions against criminal organizations involved in the illegal online distribution of copyrighted material.
In June, the court held that P2P companies can be held liable for copyright infringement of their users under certain circumstances, but key U.S. Senators suggested Thursday that the decision might not have gone far enough. At a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, lawmakers warned P2P industry leaders to do more about piracy on their networks or face potential legislation that could restrict P2P usage. At issue is whether to let the marketplace breathe in the aftermath of the Grokster decision or to codify the high court's reasoning into law. "I do hope we're being heard because there are people in the Senate who want us to move now," said committee chairman Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). "We're holding a hearing to see what's going on in these industries and to see what might be done to terminate this illegal activity." Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California), whose constituency ranges from Hollywood to Silicon Valley, said, "I want everybody to come out of this in good shape, but there's a right and wrong here." She skewered the P2P industry for failing to keep pornography from finding its way to children who enter innocent search terms into P2P software and "get something horrific" instead. "If you don't do more to protect our children, it's not going to sit well," she said. Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, said his member companies all oppose children accessing porn but that filtering systems would be ineffective. After Boxer pointed out that several industry-authorized P2P networks are applying filters, Eisgrau countered that those are "closed" systems. "There would be very serious social, scientific, educational and all kinds of ramifications if in fact Congress were to require or to suggest that only so-called closed peer-to-peer operating systems were now lawful," he said.
