Blocking access to Allofmp3

Back in October a Danish court rules that an ISP Tele2 must block its users access to Allofmp3.com. A month or so later Swedish ISP Perspektiv Bredband followed suit. Perspektiv have just rescinded their decision – get the facts here.

Record Labels sue Allofmp3

The RIAA has filed a suit in New York against Russian download service Allofmp3.  Business Week reports that:

The music companies are seeking a court order against Mediaservices and unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Decision on Kuro in China

Interfax reports that a legal precendent has been set in China with a ruling against P2P operator Kuro.

The key point is that the copyright infringement was organized – the company charged money and its activity could be defined as active inducement.

YouTube in Japan

A couple of weeks ago the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) wrote to YouTube complaining about the burden of requesting takedown of copyrighted content via the DMCA. The letter also requested that YouTube “take provisional measures … in order to prevent illegal uploads of audio-visual works, which copyrights are neither owned by the persons posting the works on the website themselves nor licensed by right owners”.  including:

 1. Indicate on the top page of the YouTube website, in Japanese, that “Posting or uploading audio-visual works, which copyrights are neither owned by yourselves nor licensed by right owners, is illegal, and such act may impose you civil and/or criminal liability.”   2. Register the names and addresses of those users making uploads and to keep such records.   3. Terminate the user accounts of those who illegally uploaded audio-visual works deleted on and after June 2006 upon our requests and to not allow them to make further uploads

In my opinion the requests are reasonable enough. The onus to monitor its content can stack up on a content owner. I think there is effort invovled from both sides. Word is that YouTube are responding to the request, but I have yet to see what their response is. I suspect they will require a database of copyrighted content that they can filter against. Does the content industry have this to offer?

Linking to infringing copyright

An Australian Appeal court has upheld a ruling from last year that linking to copyrighted content contravenes Australia’s copyright laws. The site in question was mp3s4free.net which was raided by MIPA in 2004 which then led to the lawsuit brought by the major record labels.

The question of link sites is an interesting one and legal decision vary from country to country. It is one of the reasons why Bit Torrent indexes are hard to tackle legally.

Find some discussion of US rulings on linking here including some of the cases which never reached court.

DRM – simplicity and interoperability

The BBC reports that Bill Gates told an invite only audience that

we don’t have the right thing here in terms of simplicity or interoperability

and that incentive schemes work for artists.

Whilst the article itself is not enlightening in any way it may be signalling a move or positioning itself from Microsoft re. DRM.

P2P isn’t a business. It’s a catalyst

Title of this post is stolen from the article I am linking to…

http://internet.seekingalpha.com/article/22128 

Basically underlines the point that the major growth in P2P traffic is forcing media companies to evolve how they distribute and sell their content and it will be a killer app using P2P, not the growth of P2P per se, that drives fibre rollout.

Japanese court convicts P2P developer

A  Japanese court just convicted a software developer for helping violate copyrights. The defendent wrote the Winny P2P software. Whilst the court did not rule the software itself to be illegal they said that the defendent’s actions and omissions constituted helping violate copyrights.

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200612140146.html

Bronfman kids file-share

Not the most important news but when I found this on Mark Mulligan’s blog I had to chuckle…

http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/mulligan/archives/2006/12/dont_steal_musi.html

 

China gets tough on internet piracy, or does it?

In the name of defusing tension with the US on online entertainment piracy, China steps up regulation of online music, ordering local internet companies to gain approval from government censors and proving they have distribution rights before making foreign music available
https://registration.ft.com/registration/barrier?referer=&location=http%3A//www.ft.com/cms/s/1f6faa34-8a4e-11db-ae27-0000779e2340.html

and games, ordering distributors to give imports to censors for approval
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/82455/from/rss09

A likely side effect of these new regulations is to introduce hurdles giving local content an advantage on entry to market…..

And, at the same time, China restricts foreign investment in TV and film…
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117955459.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Oh, and Chinese YouTube-alike gets $12million in funding
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/061212/cntu010.html?.v=25

Here begin the media battles…..