Among the target clips is a brilliant parody of the DMCA takedown requests.

The maker of the DMCA parody has filed a dispute, arguing that his work is covered under fair use so for now it’s still online.

A must see.

Article from: FreakBits

Over on TorrentFreak we often get emails from people who have received letters from lawyers who claim that they have been caught infringing copyright by sharing illicit files on the Internet.

The majority of the time these are emails from account holders who did not infringe copyright but are the victim of mistaken identity. Sometimes the anti-piracy tracking company gets it completely wrong and sometimes they trace the correct IP address but blame the wrong guy.

This weekend we received an email which throws up an interesting moral dilemma.

A BitTorrent user from the US visiting his girlfriend who lives in Europe used a neighbor’s open WiFi network in order to download some media. Unfortunately the neighbor received a letter demanding a payment of several hundred euros for copyright infringement.

Clearly the neighbor is 100% innocent and could argue his/her case quite honestly. Unfortunately, as pointed out by the UK Lords recently in a discussion about the proposed Digital Economy Bill, it is impossible to prove your innocence in these cases.

In this case the infringer told us that he’s going to admit to the infringement and hand over his details so that the law firm pursues him instead, which is pretty admirable. But many people wouldn’t be so forthcoming.

If anyone has any intelligent advice for this guy, feel free to post in the comments, but in addition we’re interested to hear what you would do in his situation.

Is it OK for bill payers to take responsibility for everything that happens on their connection? Should WiFi network operators be responsible for securing their networks from intrusions?

Should people really be using other peoples’ networks to infringe copyright or with the introduction of more and more draconian copyright laws, will this be the way of the future?

Article from: FreakBits

The massive Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World and a landmark famous all around the globe. It took 9 years to build and was finally finished in 1931 at a cost of $250,000.

It’s now the center of a rather unholy row between Brazil’s Catholic Church and Columbia Pictures in the US. The Hollywood company included images of the statue being destroyed by a giant wave in its movie 2012 and the Church is far from happy.

“The archdiocese refused the use of the religious symbol during pre-production of the movie, but Columbia Pictures did not respect the prohibition,” said Church lawyer Claudine Dutra.

“Many faithful have said they are shocked and offended by the images of the destruction of this sanctuary that the archdiocese wanted to preserve. We want Columbia Pictures to publicly declare that it did not intend to cause offense,” she added.

The statue was created by Paul Landowski who died in 1961, but the archdiocese holds the copyright until 2032, when the sculpture enters the public domain.

I guess it would be customary to have a go at Columbia for being copyright hypocrites, but i’m struggling not to suggest that both parties should have their heads banged together on this.

Article from: FreakBits

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) is a coalition of many pro-copyright groups including the MPAA, RIAA and the Business Software Association. Its aim is to protect their businesses from threats to their copyright exploitation models, and to convince lawmakers to clamp down on piracy.

Every year the outfit produces a set of recommendations for the US Government. It produces a list of countries that are a threat, recommending the US Trade Representative to put these on a watchlist. Usually, this has something to do with weak copyright laws but this year they see a news threat in addition to that.

Open Source software.

In other words, Firefox, WordPress, Ubuntu and Open Office are the software equivalent of the axis of evil.

Countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and India should be placed on the watchlist for their Open Source support according to the International Intellectual Property Alliance. With similar initiatives countries such as the UK, The Netherlands and others may soon follow.

Open Source software “simply weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness” while “it fails to build respect for intellectual property rights,” the IIPA recommendation says. “It encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations.”

Oh really?

What they really mean to say of course is that Open Software is saving the tax payers a lot of money, money that usually goes into the pockets of the some of the major software companies.

You can read more details on this absurd move at the excellent Guardian blog.

Article from: FreakBits

In 2008, Newzbin received complaints from the MPA who later in the year filed for an injunction against the site. (case background here)

The case began in London’s High Court last week and since then a chaotic view of the proceedings has been painted by Newzbin in a couple of daily updates.

Since then Newzbin claims that the MPA has tried to use these updates against them in court, but will continue to provide them anyway in order to keep their users updated.

There’s unlikely to be many more for a while though, since the case has been adjourned for 2 weeks. Newzbin asked for more time to go hire more lawyers, an application the MPA contested. In the end Newzbin prevailed.

The Usenet indexing company now says it expects closing submissions in early March 2010.

Article from: FreakBits

In 2008, Newzbin received complaints from the MPA who later in the year filed for an injunction against the site. (case background here)

The showdown in London’s High Court before Mr Justice Kitchin began last week but after the first day, reporting by Newzbin went a little quiet.

Since then there have been two updates by the company. Day 3 first;

There have been bizarre side issues which have emerged. To be fair to the MPA (god, we never thought we’d ever say that!) it was out of their control and down to internal Newzbin issues. Combined with Caesium falling ill during cross-examination by the opposing barrister, this has caused a delay and things are a bit of a shambles at the moment.

Quite what happens next week when the trial restarts is unclear and there may be more delays. Times are getting interesting: in a Chinese sense.

Caesium’s health aside, the update for Day 4 paints a pretty gloomy picture.

A refreshed Caesium finished cross examination today.

We may be being paranoid, but at the moment our hunch is that things are looking less positive for us than last week. We hope we are wrong.

Other than these updates, Newzbin isn’t commenting on the case directly and the MPA told us they could not comment on an ongoing case, so providing more detailed coverage is proving problematic.

Article from: FreakBits

On February 4th, Australian Internet service provider iiNet won its court battle against several Hollywood studios.

Justice Dennis Cowdroy announced that iiNet was not responsible for the infringements of its subscribers when they shared copyright material using BitTorrent.

In the wake of this decision, ISP Exetel says it will modify long-standing procedures it has in place to forward infringement notices to its customers on behalf of copyright holders.

Previously customer access to the Internet was temporarily blocked while they either denied the infringement allegations or apologized to rights holders. Shortly this will change. In an email to customers the company said;

“We will continue to send any infringement notices we receive in the future, but before the end of February we will not require the user to acknowledge receipt of it nor will we temporarily block the customer’s internet access.”

“Subject to final legal advice, and re-coding time and testing, we will in future simply send the infringement notice to the registered ‘owner’ of the service,” the company added.

It seems the iiNet decision has clarified the position and responsibilities of ISPs, but not necessarily in the direction that copyright holders would’ve liked.

Article from: FreakBits

As reported on TorrentFreak, in 2008 a city in the north of England took drastic action to stop people selling pirate DVDs and CDs at a street market.

Market officials threw out the baby along with the bath water by introduced a blanket ban on all CDs and DVDs – not just the counterfeit ones but ALL media and audio-visual products, including computer games.

Now, a council in Leeds, England, has dealt with its piracy problem by throwing out the baby, the bath water, the bath and the bath room, by shutting down an entire market following complaints and lobbying by FACT, the MPAA-funded Federation Against Copyright Theft.

Leeds City Council said it had closed down the near 20 year old Cross Green market – a venue which attracts up to 1,000 stallholders every week – because of the high levels of illegal and counterfeit goods on sale. Arrests and convictions had apparently not solved the issue.

“FACT has been working with Safer Leeds to find a solution to the problems that have plagued Cross Green Market for years. Over the past year alone we, along with other organisations, have made frequent visits to the market and found a high proportion of stalls selling counterfeit and stolen goods,” said Kieron Sharp, FACT Director General.

“It is vital that the trade in counterfeit goods which has blighted so many markets is stamped out and those markets are returned to being safe environments for families to enjoy. It is regrettable that criminal activity in Cross Green Market had reached such levels that the only solution was to shut it down,” he added.

The hundreds of legitimate traders affected by the closure said they were happy that their businesses had been ruined by the decision, since those selling the pirate DVDs have now all given up their trade and piracy has completely stopped in Leeds.

Yeah, right….

Thanks to Andrew

Article from: FreakBits

To celebrate Australia Day, Google invited people to enter artwork for their 2009 “Doodle 4 Google” competition.

The winner was 12-year-old Jessie Du, whose artwork adorns Google’s Australian homepage today.

Sadly her work has now been graphically adjusted due to a copyright dispute.

“You may have noticed that the Google Doodle on the homepage today is slightly different to Jessie’s original entry, because that one contained copyright imagery that we weren’t able to publish on the homepage today,” said Google product marketing manager Katharina Friedrich.

The problem lies with the inclusion of the Aboriginal flag in the center of the artwork, notably missing in the adapted version in the second image you see above.

Harold Thomas, who designed the flag as a symbol of unity and identity for the Aboriginal people, refused to give Google permission to reproduce the design without payment.

Article from: FreakBits

After seemingly endless legal tennis, the French government, led by Nicholas Sarkozy, finally pushed their controversial graduated response system through.

Last week, French senator Michel Thiolliere said that he had high hopes for the so-called Hadopi legislation, estimating that nearly everyone warned for a second time would stop illegal file-sharing for good.

Today, French culture minister Frederic Mitterrand admitted that there are some technical bugs to iron out of the system, but they should be fixed in the coming months.

The hunt for illicit file-sharers, he said, will begin in the spring.

In the meantime, French file-sharers will be getting prepared.

Article from: FreakBits