www.dpingram.com

US legislators are mulling over a new law that would authorize the Department of Justice to file civil lawsuits against file-sharers.

The Intellectual Property Enforcement Act of 2007, introduced last week would also create a new FBI unit to focus on enforcing intellectual property laws and award $20 million a year to the FBI and Justice Department to investigate computer crimes.

Some consumer advocates are condemning the proposed measure, saying it would turn the federal authorities into private enforcers for the entertainment companies.

“Need we spend more money protecting the property of a small number of companies?” asks Gigi Sohn, co-founder of Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

A similar bill, the Pirate Act, was introduced in 2004 and cleared the Senate, but wasn’t enacted. That measure also came in for similar criticisms, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation blasting it as “yet another attempt to make taxpayers fund the misguided war on file sharing.”

In the last several years, the entertainment industry has brought thousands of lawsuits against individual consumers accused of file-sharing. The cases have been settled or withdrawn, but the Record Industry Association of America recently prevailed at trial against Jammie Thomas, a single mother found liable for $220,000 for uploading 24 tracks to a file-sharing site.

Still, despite the settlements and courtroom victory, the lawsuits are largely perceived as having hurt the industry’s reputation with fans. Some musicians also take issue with the record labels’ attempts to shut down peer-to-peer sites.

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor this spring accused his record label of overcharging and urged fans to download tracks for free at file-sharing sites. Reznor and rapper Saul Williams recently collaborated on an album and posted a version of it online for free.

DI> A misbegotten idea - See Cory Doctorow’s comments at the end of the article. Cory is a renowned specialist in this field, commentator, and a law professor at Harvard (I think Harvard).

Via BBC yesterday
Anti file-sharing laws considered
The UK government could legislate to crack down on illegal file-sharers, a senior politician has told the BBC’s iPM programme. Lord Triesman, the parliamentary Under Secretary for Innovation, Universities and Skills, said intellectual property theft would not be tolerated.

“If we can’t get voluntary arrangements we will legislate,” he said.

The comments could prove controversial with privacy advocates and internet service providers. Lord Triesman called on internet service providers to take a “more activist role” in the problem of illegal file-sharing.

Data banks
There are ongoing talks between internet service providers and the music industry and these are, said Lord Triesman, “progressing more promisingly than people might have thought six months ago”.

“For the most part I think there are going to be successful voluntary schemes between the creative industries and ISPs. Our preferred position is that we shouldn’t have to regulate,” he said.

He admitted that the technology necessary to track illegal file sharing would mean that “it is quite possible to know where it is happening and who it is happening with”. While he said that the government had no interest in “hounding 14-year-olds who shared music”, it was intent on tracking down those who made multiple copies for profit. “Where people have registered music as an intellectual property I believe we will be able to match data banks of that music to music going out and being exchanged on the net,” he said.

“We have some simple choices to make. If creative artists can’t earn a living as a result of the work they produce, then we will kill off creative artists and that would be a tragedy.”

DI> its the same old story, legislation to try to stop technology changing teh existing business model, it just won’t work, if people can find a way around it they will. What is needed is the music industry to embrace the new business model and find enw creative ways to monetize it. As some are indeed doing.

Mere conduit
The debate centre around peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, applications that allow internet users to exchange files with each other directly or through a mediating server. Computer users with the same type of P2P application can connect to each other and directly access files from one another’s hard drives. Some people are using peer-to-peer applications to copy or distribute files including copyrighted material such as music, films and software without paying royalties. People who do this may be infringing the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

There have been various crack-downs on such applications. Most recently the UK-run members-only site OiNK was shut down and several properties in the UK and Holland were raided.

‘Misbegotten idea’
The Internet Service Providers Association has always maintained that it cannot be held responsible for illegal peer-to-peer traffic because it is “merely a conduit” of such material. “ISPA does not support abuses of copyright and intellectual property theft,” said an ISPA spokesman.

DI> Its not quite as simple as that, and most people I have spoken to don’t know the full details of the issue.

He said: “However, ISPs cannot monitor or record the type of information passed over their network. ISPs are no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope.” “ISPs deal with many more packets of data each day than postal services and data protection legislation actually prevents ISPs from looking at the content of the packets sent,” he added.

The British Phonographic Industry was pleased at the government’s tough line.
“We greatly welcome the government reiterating its view that ISPs should work with us to tackle the problem of internet piracy, or else face legislation,” said Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI.

“ISPs operate the pathways to digital music consumers. Through our talks with the ISP community we are hopeful that together we can arrive at voluntary co-operative agreements that work to the benefit of the whole digital marketplace,” he added.

Cory Doctorow
The iPM programme also spoke to renowned blogger Cory Doctorow who described the idea as “misbegotten”. “It represents the opinion of someone who doesn’t understand technology very well, and hasn’t really thought through the implications of what he’s promising. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who’s an actual computer scientist involved in digital signal processing who believes that you can accurately identify copyrighted works with any kind of reliability in a variety of situations,” he said.

He believed the idea would createa “giant toxic pool of personally idenitifying private information” that ISPs would not be able to keep secret. “You will dismantle the fundamentals of the democratic state, which is to be free in your person, your mind and your conversation from scrutiny and surveillance. So this is a really misbegotten idea,” he told iPM.

The giants are trying to tame the copyright jungle known as the Web. On Thursday, several giant companies — including Disney, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Viacom, CBS, and News Corp.’s Fox and MySpace — agreed on rules for posting copyright-protected material online.

The agreement, reported by the Wall Street Journal, was the result of a year’s worth of negotiation between Disney and Microsoft, who brought the others in — including two smaller companies, Veoh Networks and Dailymotion SA.

Adhere to Certain Principles

In fact, the entire agreement could be seen as reflecting the companies’ mood in the post-YouTube-lawsuit era. The companies agreed not to challenge sites for infringement if the sites, according to the Journal, “adhere to certain principles.” The principles include eliminating infringing, copyright-protected material uploaded by users, and, if the content does get uploaded, blocking it before it is made available to the public.

Google said it is making progress on at least one of those principles. It announced that it is testing technology to prevent copyright-protected content on its sites from being made public, by pulling flagged content down within minutes. It said it doesn’t yet have a solution to prevent the content from being posted in the first place.

For this recently announced agreement, it seems it’s the intent that counts. The agreement is more of an understanding about rules of engagement than a legal contract, and requires best efforts by content sites.

Step Forward or Not?
“There’s always a question about what is a good faith effort,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research. But, given the digital world of easily distributed content, he said, the best that might be possible is to encourage proper behavior and best efforts, as the agreement does.

James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester, offered a different take, saying that the announcement was not a step forward. “All it did was put in one place the arguments that they have been making behind closed doors,” he said. It doesn’t propose a specific technology or rewards system, he added, but just gives the “lawyers at each of these companies something to point to as evidence that they have, indeed, been working the past eight months.”

McQuivey suggested that they could have established a centralized database of copyright-protected videos and a rights-management clearinghouse. The new announcement doesn’t pressure Google, he said, and Google can now say it is “light years ahead of the rest of them and therefore can do its own thing.”

This article via Barry Levine, newsfactor.com

Via Yahoo, here, By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer Fri Oct 19, 9:15 AM ET

NEW YORK - Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.
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The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

If widely applied by other ISPs, the technology Comcast is using would be a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks. While these are mainly known as sources of copyright music, software and movies, BitTorrent in particular is emerging as a legitimate tool for quickly disseminating legal content.

The principle of equal treatment of traffic, called “Net Neutrality” by proponents, is not enshrined in law but supported by some regulations. Most of the debate around the issue has centered on tentative plans, now postponed, by large Internet carriers to offer preferential treatment of traffic from certain content providers for a fee.

Comcast’s interference, on the other hand, appears to be an aggressive way of managing its network to keep file-sharing traffic from swallowing too much bandwidth and affecting the Internet speeds of other subscribers.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV operator and No. 2 Internet provider, would not specifically address the practice, but spokesman Charlie Douglas confirmed that it uses sophisticated methods to keep Net connections running smoothly.

“Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent,” he said.

Douglas would not specify what the company means by “access” — Comcast subscribers can download BitTorrent files without hindrance. Only uploads of complete files are blocked or delayed by the company, as indicated by AP tests.

But with “peer-to-peer” technology, users exchange files with each other, and one person’s upload is another’s download. That means Comcast’s blocking of certain uploads has repercussions in the global network of file sharers.

Comcast’s technology kicks in, though not consistently, when one BitTorrent user attempts to share a complete file with another user.

Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer — it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: “Sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye.”

Matthew Elvey, a Comcast subscriber in the San Francisco area who has noticed BitTorrent uploads being stifled, acknowledged that the company has the right to manage its network, but disapproves of the method, saying it appears to be deceptive.

“There’s the wrong way of going about that and the right way,” said Elvey, who is a computer consultant.

Comcast’s interference affects all types of content, meaning that, for instance, an independent movie producer who wanted to distribute his work using BitTorrent and his Comcast connection could find that difficult or impossible — as would someone pirating music.

Internet service providers have long complained about the vast amounts of traffic generated by a small number of subscribers who are avid users of file-sharing programs. Peer-to-peer applications account for between 50 percent and 90 percent of overall Internet traffic, according to a survey this year by ipoque GmbH, a German vendor of traffic-management equipment.

“We have a responsibility to manage our network to ensure all our customers have the best broadband experience possible,” Douglas said. “This means we use the latest technologies to manage our network to provide a quality experience for all Comcast subscribers.”

The practice of managing the flow of Internet data is known as “traffic shaping,” and is already widespread among Internet service providers. It usually involves slowing down some forms of traffic, like file-sharing, while giving others priority. Other ISPs have attempted to block some file-sharing application by so-called “port filtering,” but that method is easily circumvented and now largely ineffective.

Comcast’s approach to traffic shaping is different because of the drastic effect it has on one type of traffic — in some cases blocking it rather than slowing it down — and the method used, which is difficult to circumvent and involves the company falsifying network traffic.

The “Net Neutrality” debate erupted in 2005, when AT&T Inc. suggested it would like to charge some Web companies more for preferential treatment of their traffic. Consumer advocates and Web heavyweights like Google Inc. and Amazon Inc. cried foul, saying it’s a bedrock principle of the Internet that all traffic be treated equally.

To get its acquisition of BellSouth Corp. approved by the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T agreed in late 2006 not to implement such plans or prioritize traffic based on its origin for two and a half years. However, it did not make any commitments not to prioritize traffic based on its type, which is what Comcast is doing.

The FCC’s stance on traffic shaping is not clear. A 2005 policy statement says that “consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice,” but that principle is “subject to reasonable network management.” Spokeswoman Mary Diamond would not elaborate.

Free Press, a Washington-based public interest group that advocates Net Neutrality, opposes the kind of filtering applied by Comcast.

“We don’t believe that any Internet provider should be able to discriminate, block or impair their consumers ability to send or receive legal content over the Internet,” said Free Press spokeswoman Jen Howard.

Paul “Tony” Watson, a network security engineer at Google Inc. who has previously studied ways hackers could disrupt Internet traffic in manner similar to the method Comcast is using, said the cable company was probably acting within its legal rights.

“It’s their network and they can do what they want,” said Watson. “My concern is the precedent. In the past, when people got an ISP connection, they were getting a connection to the Internet. The only determination was price and bandwidth. Now they’re going to have to make much more complicated decisions such as price, bandwidth, and what services I can get over the Internet.”

Several companies have sprung up that rely on peer-to-peer technology, including BitTorrent Inc., founded by the creator of the BitTorrent software (which exists in several versions freely distributed by different groups and companies).

Ashwin Navin, the company’s president and co-founder, confirmed that it has noticed interference from Comcast, in addition to some Canadian Internet service providers.

“They’re using sophisticated technology to degrade service, which probably costs them a lot of money. It would be better to see them use that money to improve service,” Navin said, noting that BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer applications are a major reason consumers sign up for broadband.

BitTorrent Inc. announced Oct. 9 that it was teaming up with online video companies to use its technology to distribute legal content.

Other companies that rely on peer-to-peer technology, and could be affected if Comcast decides to expand the range of applications it filters, include Internet TV service Joost, eBay Inc.’s Skype video-conferencing program and movie download appliance Vudu. There is no sign that Comcast is hampering those services.

Comcast subscriber Robb Topolski, a former software quality engineer at Intel Corp., started noticing the interference when trying to upload with file-sharing programs Gnutella and eDonkey early this year.

In August, Topolski began to see reports on Internet forum DSLreports.com from other Comcast users with the same problem. He now believes that his home town of Hillsboro, Ore., was a test market for the technology that was later widely applied in other Comcast service areas.

Topolski agrees that Comcast has a right to manage its network and slow down traffic that affects other subscribers, but disapproves of their method.

“By Comcast not acknowledging that they do this at all, there’s no way to report any problems with it,” Topolski said.

YouTube, the Google Inc video-sharing site has said that it has begun public testing of a long-awaited video-matching database in its latest bid to ward off lawsuits over video piracy.

The world’s largest online video-sharing site said the YouTube Video Identification technology is a database that stores reference files of original video content and associated ownership rights and compares it to any video YouTube users attempt to upload.

“We will be doing complete file scans,” YouTube Product Manager David King told reporters on a conference call to discuss the expanded video ID test. “A movie studio can give us a three-hour movie and we will scan it in its entirety.”

YouTube had previously said it had begun a private test of the video-identification technology with nine media companies, including several movie studios. It has named only Walt Disney Co and Time Warner Inc as joining the test.

YouTube has come under fire from several traditional media companies that say it has dragged its heels in offering reliable ways to identify video clips uploaded by regular users without permission. In March, Viacom Inc filed one of several suits against YouTube, seeking $1 billion in damages.

Asked by a reporter whether Viacom was taking part in the test while continuing to pursue its federal suit against Google and YouTube, officials of YouTube reiterated that they only had permission to talk about partners Disney and Time Warner.

“Any other discussions have been under NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and I can’t confirm who we have been talking to,” YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine told reporters. An NDA is a legally binding agreement not to disclose company secrets

Viacom’s General Counsel Mike Fricklas said of YouTube’s move to begin public test of the technology: “We’re delighted that Google appears to be stepping up to its responsibility and ending the practice of profiting from infringement.”

YouTube’s attorney said the new technology goes beyond what the company is required to do by law to protect copyrights and that its efforts to help copyright holders had no bearing on the lawsuits against it.

The YouTube Video Identification technology is proprietary to Google, officials said. YouTube already works with a private company, Audible Magic, to offer audio-identification tools to detect unlawful uses of music inside YouTube videos.

This was the latest in a series of moves YouTube has made to ward off widespread piracy of popular video programming and help copyright holders protect their programs.

YouTube has also adopted a technology that identifies exact duplicates of video files, a 10-minute limit on video clips users can upload to the site and an automated process for media owners to notify it of pirated videos.

Levine said her company would consider making its database available to other online video sites instead of keeping the data that media owners provide to itself, a move that would eliminate the need for media content owners to work with different copyright protection systems on dozens of Web video sites.

“We are building this with the idea of opening it up and making it more general over time,” she said of the potential to allow third-party video sites to check its reference database.

MTV Networks-owner Viacom has charged the company with “massive intentional copyright infringement” after demanding the removal of clips of its popular shows “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”
via http://www.ciol.com/

While YouTube is pioneering its own technology, others have been experimenting with similar technology from players like Web Sheriff, Gracenote , Vobile, and Audible Magic.

UPDATE - this via Engadget…

YouTube unveiled YouTube Video Identification, a system designed to prevent copyrighted videos from making their way onto the site without the consent of the owner. Rather cunningly, YouTube requires that content owners send in a master copy of all their copyrighted content — y’know, so they can cross reference it against uploads (nothing to do with Google’s aim of indexing everything, ever … no.) Any data that matches the reference data can be deleted automatically, but only if the content owner says so. According to YouTube chief counsel Zahavah Levine, there will be a way for content owners to set it up so YouTube can scan content on other servers — removing the requirement for a master copy to be uploaded to YouTube — although Levine said that method “would be more difficult.” For who, Google, or the TV and movie studios?

EMI has released George Harrison’s solo catalog online, with an initial offering of 9 albums, and the rest to follow next year. Some of the albums available now include “All Things Must Pass,” “Thirty Three & 1/3,” “George Harrison” and “Somewhere In England.” With this release, all four Beatles’ solo catalogs are now available digitally.

This is the first time Harrison’s solo albums will be made available in digital format on a worldwide scale. You can purchase Harrison’s albums from any online retailer that sells EMI content, including iTunes, Amazon and Wal-Mart. As with most EMI content, Harrison’s albums will be DRM-free.

While EMI has decided to go the DRM-free route with its music, there’s still the lingering court case its Capitol Records has won against Jammie Thomas, which she has appealed. There is also a growing number of artists that are encouraging the free distribution and file-sharing for their content, with hopes of making up the cash with peripherals and concerts.

via Mashable

See also my other DRM-related posts here, here, here, and here

Imeem Partners with Sony BMG to Legally Stream Music
from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow

Imeem, the service that offers a widget for sharing your music playlist, has reached a deal with Sony BMG to legally offer their music to users. In exchange for allowing Imeem users stream Sony BMG music in their widgets, the record label will get a cut of the advertising revenue. Imeem previously signed a similar deal with Warner Music, after the record company first tried to sue them.

Additionally, the company is reportedly in talks with Universal Music Group and EMI Group about similar content deals.

from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow

Universal Music Group has sued video sharing site Veoh for “massive copyright infringement”. UMG threatened Veoh with a lawsuit in August, and Veoh pre-emptively filed against the music label claiming that it hadn’t infringed any copyrights. UMG provides its reasoning in the documents filed in a Los Angeles court on Tuesday:

“Veoh follows in the ignominious footsteps of other recent mass infringers such as Napster…Veoh’s rampant infringement will not stop until Veoh, and those who own, control, and run it, are enjoined and held financially responsible.”

Could Veoh be the next Bolt.com, crippled by a lawsuit it can’t afford to fight or settle? Veoh has some powerful backers, including Time Warner and former Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Officer Michael Eisner. Eisner is also on the board of directors. Veoh may stand a better chance of survival than Bolt, but the bad blood between the company and UMG means that a partnership is off the cards for now.

Update: Veoh mailed in their official response:
UMG’s action is not surprising and reflects their limited understanding of Veoh and of the online video space as a whole. Veoh is recognized by many media companies as a DMCA-compliant company and is committed to respecting the rights of content owners. In fact, we’re currently working cooperatively with major media companies and the MPAA to develop standards for copyright protection. It’s unfortunate that UMG prefers to continue their pattern of litigation rather than contribute to the important discussions going on within our industry.

via Mashable

After months of hearing about Universal Music Group’s displeasure, DivX yesterday filed a preemptive federal lawsuit of its own that asks a judge to exorcise the “specter of litigation” currently haunting DivX.

At issue is DivX’s Stage6 video hosting service, which is a bit like YouTube but requires the DivX codec instead of Flash. According to a copy of the complaint seen by Ars, Universal has told DivX that the site is “knowingly involved in the infringement of UMG’s copyrighted materials, and exploits that widespread infringement for its own commercial gain.” In response, DivX points out the obvious: it complies with the DMCA and Universal has an easy method to request the takedown of any music video that infringes its copyrights.

According to DivX, Universal has been not interested in supplying actual DMCA takedown notices and instead “has chosen to posture and threaten DivX in the hopes of extracting an unwarranted windfall.”

Both companies believe that the other one wants an “unwarranted windfall,” and it looks like a judge will now step in and settle the matter. According to DivX, it has complied with every legitimate DMCA takedown request that it has received, and it goes even further than the law requires by using file hashes to block repeated uploads of the infringing content. Assuming this is true, Universal would not seem to have a case, which may be why the company has not yet brought an infringement lawsuit against DivX.

via ars technica

The policy of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to sue users caught downloading music illegally has done nothing to slow the trade of copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Here is a short excerpt from the report:

The music industry initially responded to P2P file sharing as they have always responded to disruptive innovations: they loosed the lawyers on the innovators, in hopes of smothering the technology in its infancy. Beginning with the December 1999 lawsuit against Napster, the recording industry sued major P2P technology companies one after the other: Scour, Aimster, AudioGalaxy, Morpheus, Grokster, Kazaa, and iMesh.5 This despite the fact that these same technologies were also being used for non-infringing purposes, including sharing of authorized songs, live concert recordings, public domain works, movie trailers, and video games.

The legal attacks on P2P technologies were initially successful in the courts.6 But as it was winning the legal battles, the recording industry was losing the war. After Napster was shut down, new networks quickly appeared. Napster was replaced by Aimster and AudioGalaxy, which were then in turn supplanted by Morpheus and Kazaa, which were in turn eclipsed by eDonkey and Bit Torrent. The number of file sharers, as well as the number of P2P software applications, just kept growing, despite the recording industry’s early courtroom victories. More recently, music fans have been turning to new so-called “darknet” solutions, such as swapping iPods, burning CD-Rs, and modifying Apple’s iTunes software to permit direct downloading.

“The lawsuit campaign has enriched only lawyers, rather than compensating artists for file sharing,” the EFF declared in a 25-page report (PDF). “One thing has become clear: suing music fans is no answer to the peer-to-peer dilemma.”

The EFF claims that traffic on peer-to-peer file-sharing services has ballooned since the RIAA began suing individual users, from 3.3 million monthly users in August 2003 to more than 8.8 million by June 2005.

The recording industry trade group is also singling out a small group of copyright violators and saddling them with unnecessarily steep financial penalties, the EFF lamented.

“There is no question that the RIAA’s lawsuit campaign is unfairly singling out a few people for a disproportionate amount of punishment,” reads the report.
“Tens of millions of Americans continue to use peer-to-peer file sharing software and other new technologies to share music, yet the RIAA has randomly singled out only a few for retribution through lawsuits.”

Instead of pursuing action against individual users, the EFF recommended that the RIAA and its members should adopt policies to bring customers back to purchasing music.

David Ingram> or perhaps seek out and adopt new business models which are aligned to the new generation of consumers’ behaviors

Lowering music prices and abandoning digital rights management technology would provide a far better incentive for users to purchase legitimate copies of music, the group suggested.

“If the recording industry is serious about luring music fans away from peer-to-peer networks and other methods of sharing, it should focus on dangling a tastier carrot, rather than swatting more individuals with the lawsuit stick, ” said the report.

via: VNU net