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Polish parliament:
EFF overview of the DMCA, twelve years on:
https://www.eff.org/wp/unintended-co...ces-under-dmca
Polish parliament:
https://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/AC...ACTA_mascaradeI want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly."
"As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens' legitimate demands."
"Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications."
"This agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this mascarade."
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/0...ous-about-actaJanuary 27, 2012 | By Maira Sutton and Parker Higgins
We Have Every Right to Be Furious About ACTA
If there’s one thing that encapsulates what’s wrong with the way government functions today, ACTA is it. You wouldn’t know it from the name, but the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a plurilateral agreement designed to broaden and extend existing intellectual property (IP) enforcement laws to the Internet. While it was only negotiated between a few countries,1 it has global consequences. First because it will create new rules for the Internet, and second, because its standards will be applied to other countries through the U.S.’s annual Special 301 process. Negotiated in secret, ACTA bypassed checks and balances of existing international IP norm-setting bodies, without any meaningful input from national parliaments, policymakers, or their citizens. Worse still, the agreement creates a new global ins ution, an "ACTA Committee" to oversee its implementation and interpretation that will be made up of unelected members with no legal obligation to be transparent in their proceedings. Both in substance and in process, ACTA embodies an outdated top-down, arbitrary approach to government that is out of step with modern notions of participatory democracy.
The EU and 22 of its 27 member states signed ACTA yesterday in Tokyo. This news is neither momentous nor surprising. This is but the latest step in more than three years of non-transparent negotiations. In December, the Council of the European Union—one of the European Union’s two legislative bodies, composed of executives from the 27 EU member states—adopted ACTA during a completely unrelated meeting on agriculture and fisheries. Of course, this is not the end of the story in the EU. For ACTA to be adopted as EU law, the European Parliament has to vote on whether to accept or reject it.
In the U.S., there are growing concerns about the cons utionality of negotiating ACTA as a “sole executive agreement”. This is not just a semantic argument. If ACTA were categorized as a treaty, it would have to be ratified by the Senate. But the USTR and the Administration have consistently maintained that ACTA is a sole executive agreement negotiated under the President’s power. On that theory, it does not need Congressional approval and thus ACTA already became binding on the US government when Ambassador Ron Kirk signed it last October.
But leading US Cons utional Scholars disagree. Professors Jack Goldsmith and Larry Lessig, questioned the Cons utionality of the executive agreement classification in 2010:The president has no independent cons utional authority over intellectual property or communications policy, and there is no long historical practice of making sole executive agreements in this area. To the contrary, the Cons ution gives primary authority over these matters to Congress, which is charged with making laws that regulate foreign commerce and intellectual property.2(And by the way, we agree [pdf].)
Ireland's version of SOPA to pass without parliamentary vote:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/...5/sopa-ireland
http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...m_business_popNow that federal officials are done with the data they wanted to review after shutting down file-sharing site Megaupload, the fate of that data is in limbo. Users who had legitimate files on the site — work do ents, photos, home videos and more — may see that information deleted as soon as this week.
Federal officials have reportedly told two storage companies in Virginia — Carpathia Hosting and Cogent Communications — that they may begin deleting data Thursday, The Associated Press reported.
Megaupload had been contracting with the companies to store the information, but can no longer pay those contracts because its assets have been frozen.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/79846477/The-Sky-is-Rising* According to MPAA, box office revenues grew 25 percent from 2006 to 2010 from $25.5 billion to $31.8 billion.
* Data from PricewaterhouseCoopers and iDATE show that from 1998-2010 the value of the worldwide entertainment industry grew from $449 billion to $745 billion.
* From 1999 to 2009 music concert sales in the US tripled from $1.5 billion to $4.6 billion
* Consumers’ choices growing as more movies are produced jumping from 5,635 films produced globally in 2005 to 7,193 in 2009.
* BLS data also show entertainment sector employment also grew 20 percent during that last decade and 43 percent for those identified as independent artists.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/node/6795Megaupload: A Lot Less Guilty Than You Think
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AGREEMENT + CIVIL VIOLATION = PRISON?: Count 2 is a conspiracy to commit copyright infringement claim, and references unknown parties as members of the conspiracy. Conspiracy entails an agreement to commit an offense and an overt act in furtherance of that agreement. The act in furtherance need not itself be illegal, but there must be an agreement to do an illegal act. The list of overt acts show that the object of the conspiracy was infringement by Mega users. If Defendants agreed with each other to induce others to infringe, and Rojadirecta’s lawyers are correct that inducement is not a crime, there’s a conspiracy only to violate a CIVIL law. If the idea is that Mega conspired with its users to infringe, those users may or may not have been criminally infringing copyright. They were located all over the world, and may or may not have acted willfully, i.e. intended to violate U.S. law. Again, the government would basically have alleged an agreement to violate a U.S. CIVIL law, including by many people who are not subject to U.S. rules.
Is it a federal crime to conspire to induce others to violate a U.S. civil law?
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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives..._retrieval.phpThe EFF has joined forces with one of the companies from which Megaupload rented server space to try and figure out the best way forward for users whose content was not infringing on anyone's copyright. MegaRetreival.com was launched today by the organization in conjunction with Carpathia Hosting and is now soliciting feedback from former Megaupload users who feel they were wronged.
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-f...jected-120201/Pirate Bay Founders’ Prison Sentences Final, Supreme Court Appeal Rejected
A few moments ago Sweden’s Supreme Court announced its decision not to grant leave to appeal in the long-running Pirate Bay criminal trial. This means that the previously determined jail sentences and fines handed out to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström will stand.
November 2010, the Swedish Court of Appeal found three people behind The Pirate Bay guilty of criminal copyright infringement offenses.
Although Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström all had their prison sentences decreased from the levels ordered at their original 2009 trial, they were ordered to pay increased damages amounting to millions of dollars to the entertainment company plaintiffs.
Hoping to overturn the ruling, the three filed for a hearing of their case at the Supreme Court. Today this request was denied, meaning that the sentences as determined by the Court of Appeal are now final.
Peter Sunde, also known as Brokep, now awaits 8 months in prison. Fredrik Neij, also known as TiAMO, faces 10 months. Businessman Carl Lundström has the lightest sentence of 4 months. All will have to pay their share of a combined 46 million kronor ($6.8 million) in damages.
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http://gigaom.com/2012/01/31/neil-yo...the-new-radio/Neil Young is right — piracy is the new radio
As an artist who probably makes a substantial income from licensing his music, you might think Neil Young would frown on piracy and file-sharing, but that appears not to be the case, according to an interview he gave at the Dive Into Media conference in Los Angeles. Instead of railing against file-sharers, Young called piracy “the new radio” because it’s “how music gets around.” The musician’s comment puts a lot of the hysteria about copyright infringement into perspective — as we’ve pointed out before, file-sharing and monetization aren’t mutually exclusive, and in many cases a certain amount of so-called “piracy” can actually be good for business, as authors, musicians and even game developers have come to realize.
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I hope they're as gentle as the last "war on drugs." Still can't get over the King of Crack, Ronny Reagan, pushing dope into the inner cities, while having his old lady on television saying "Just Say No."
If this new "war on drugs" goes like the last one, we're ed ......
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...omains-seized/Federal authorities said Thursday they had seized and shuttered 307 domains, 16 allegedly engaged in unauthorized live sports streaming and the remainder accused of selling fake professional sports merchandise, including National Football League paraphernalia.
The seizure, the biggest to date under the Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown known as Operation in Our Sites (.pdf), brings to more than 650 domains shuttered since the program began in June 2010. The latest seizures, which quietly began in October, were announced days ahead of Super Sunday, when the New England Patriots play the New York Giants in the NFL Super Bowl, one of the world’s most popular sporting events.
RIAA Wants To Scrap Anti-Piracy OPEN Act
"The Recording Industry Association of America found itself in an unusual position this week: opposing an anti-piracy bill that's gaining momentum in Congress ... the RIAA argues the bill won't be effective at shutting down rogue sites. The trade group warns of 'indefinite delays' as claims of infringement are investigated. And it complains that the process envisioned by OPEN would allow for 'endless submissions by parties such as Google,' further gumming up the process. All the while, the alleged rogue site would be able to continue operating. The RIAA also warns that the need to hire an attorney to navigate the ITC's arcane legal process will 'put justice out of reach for small business American victims of IP theft.' The trade group complains that sites aren't held responsible for the infringing activities of their users, a rule the trade group says 'excuses willful blindness and outright complicity in illegal activity.' RIAA also says it's 'virtually impossible' to prove that a site infringed willfully, as OPEN requires."
Right now, the industry is still stuck in the past, and is crawling oh-so-slowly into the future. They still believe people are going to want to buy DVDs or Blu-rays in five years, and that a movie ticket is well worth $15. Netflix is the closest thing they have to an advocate, but the studios are trying to drive them out of business as they see them as a threat, not a solution. It’s mind boggling.
why cant they just remove the "save as" and "download" button?
File sharing ends when I say.................
http://falkvinge.net/2011/09/05/cabl...ight-monopoly/Among the treasure troves of recently released WikiLeaks cables, we find one whose significance has bypassed Swedish media. In short: every law proposal, every ordinance, and every governmental report hostile to the net, youth, and civil liberties here in Sweden in recent years have been commissioned by the US government and industry interests.
http://torrentfreak.com/you-cant-cop...orrentfreak%29You Can’t Copyright Porn, Harassed BitTorrent Defendant Insists
A woman who says she was incorrectly accused of sharing copyrighted material on BitTorrent has filed a harassment lawsuit against a copyright troll. Porn outfit Hard Drive productions had demanded $3,400 to make their threatened lawsuit go away but their target not only says she’s innocent and harassed, but also that porn cannot be copyrighted. So, does filmed sex promote scientific progress or cons ute useful art? A court may soon have to decide.
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Well that's an interesting defense...
http://torrentfreak.com/tribler-make...t-down-120208/Tribler Makes BitTorrent Impossible to Shut Down
While the file-sharing ecosystem is currently filled with uncertainty and doubt, researchers at Delft University of Technology continue to work on their decentralized BitTorrent network. Their Tribler client doesn’t require torrent sites to find or download content, as it is based on pure peer-to-peer communication. “The only way to take it down is to take the Internet down,” the lead researcher says.
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RIAA Totally Out Of Touch: Lashes Out At Google, Wikipedia And Everyone Who Protested SOPA/PIPA
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...sopapipa.shtml
Plenty of people denying there is damage done to rights holders.....It's a worthwhile goal; nobody can deny that there are an enormous number of such sites, that many of them make a great deal of money by trampling on the legitimate rights of copyright and trademark owners, and that the consequent damage to those rights holders is substantial....
Good read. Thanks for posting
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