Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom

According to The Inquistr, Google has been ordered to hand over details of every video ever watched on YouTube to Viacom, along with user names and IP addresses.

The decision was handed down by the United States District Court (Southern District of New York) in the ongoing Viacom action against YouTube, according to a report at Wired, adding: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has already reacted, calling the order a violation of the Video Privacy Protection act that "threatens to expose deeply private information.""

China OKs video sharing for sites

Chinese regulators have given 247 firms the go-ahead to run online video-sharing services after ordering dozens of companies to halt operations earlier this year -- but it has not licensed China's top three most popular websites; Tudou.com, Youku.com and 56.com.

[via Variety]

Pirate Bay looks to disrupt new Swedish law

Techradar reports that Swedish Pirate Bay team has pledged to do everything that it can to ffight against Sweden's recent ruling that it will monitor all phone calls and internet traffic that "leaves the country".

Telecinco sues YouTube for infringement

Spanish broadcaster Telecinco has sued YouTube for intellectual property rights infringement, claiming the Web is more than a "mere intermediary" and that it "commercially exploits for its own use videos supplied by its users, making it a content provider."

[via The Hollywood Reporter]

Play fair, Uefa tells YouTube

Acording to The New Zealand Herald, UEFA, European football's governing body, has attacked file-sharing websites YouTube and Flickr for failing to prevent fans from uploading footage of games.

"Alexandre Fourtoy, chief executive of Uefa Media Technologies, compared football's piracy problem to that of the film and music industries, warning that it could harm the game.

Speaking at Uefa's international broadcast centre in Vienna, Fourtoy said: "Piracy is a big problem. There are pirates who steal content to build up a business of their own and we act against them all."

Local UK businesses warned to crack down on tv-watching staff or face big fines

Businesses in Newbury are being warned to crack down on staff watching summer sporting events illegally or face potentially hefty fines, reports Newbury Today.

"An increasing number of people are watching events such as Wimbledon online on work computers, which are required to have TV licenses if used in this way.

During the last two major televised summer sporting events, Wimbledon 2007 and the 2006 World Cup, TV Licensing - the body which monitors licences - caught more than 450 individuals and businesses in Berkshire watching television illegally.

Firms can be liable if someone is caught watching online without a licence and risk prosecution and a fine of up to £1,000 ($1,900). "

YouTube suit called threat to online communication

A $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit challenging YouTube's ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing site threatens how hundreds of millions of people exchange all kinds of information on the Internet, YouTube owner Google Inc. said.

... In a rewritten lawsuit filed last month, Viacom said YouTube consistently allows unauthorized copies of popular television programming and movies to be posted on its website and viewed tens of thousands of times.

Viacom said it had identified more than 150,000 unauthorised clips of copyrighted programming - including "SpongeBob SquarePants", "South Park" and "MTV Unplugged" episodes and the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" - that had been viewed "an astounding 1.5 billion times."

[via the Asssociated Press]

Linking to movies leads to $4 million in fines

Two more sites have been fined some $4 million for enabling copyright infringement by linking to illegal movies and TV shows. ars technica reports.

"The MPAA hails the judgments as a victory, even if the sites weren't hosting the copyrighted material themselves.

"Even though ShowStash and Cinematube didn't host any of these files, both were found guilty of contributory copyright infringement, according to the judges' opinions, because they searched for, identified, collected, and indexed links to illegal copies of movies and TV shows.

Aside from monetary damages, both sites are now prohibited from engaging in further activity that would infringe upon the studios' work. "

Party's Over, Bloggers: CBS, NBC, Fox Threaten Free Clip Service Redlasso

Redlasso a TV clip service favored by bloggers everywhere, is being threatened with legal action by three of the major media conglomerates: Fox (NWS), CBS (CBS) and NBC (GE), reports Silicon Alley Insider.

"The three companies have sent the Web firm a cease-and-desist letter for recording television and distributing it without their permission, and are giving them until May 29 to stop or get hauled into court.

What's Redlasso ? It's hard to imagine media and political blogs like Huffington Post, Perez Hilton or Hot Air without it. The company records live TV and allows users to search for clips, grab them and embed them on their own sites."

[via Techmeme]

MPAA aims at taking The Pirate Bay down with $15.4m lawsuit

BitTorrent website The Pirate Bay has been slapped with a $15.4m lawsuit bill from the MPAA for copyright infringement. ITProPortal.com reports.

"Surprisingly. the damages are being seeked for only four movies ("Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", "Syriana", "The Pink Panther" and "Walk the Line") as well as a few episodes of hit series "Prison Break".

... An MPAA Lawyer commented on the suggestion that each download is not equivalent to a lost sale by saying "We don’t know that, but the copyright law doesn’t care about that. It says that if you have downloaded something illegally, you must pay regardless, if you would’ve bought it or not.”

Entertainment Industry Wins a Round on Piracy

In what was seen as a victory for entertainment companies, a federal judge in Los Angeles issued damages totaling $111 million against an Internet company that helped users find copyright material free. The Wall Street Journal reports.

The defendant, Valence Media LLC's TorrentSpy, was one of the Web's largest "torrent trackers," meaning it helped people find movies and other material they might want to download. TorrentSpy closed in March, telling users on its site the legal climate was "simply too hostile." It didn't store the video files on its own site but directed users to other locations.

The dollar value of the award -- which Judge Florence-Marie Cooper said she calculated by assigning a value of $30,000 to each of the 3,699 infringements shown -- should get the attention of people running similar sites. But they are largely based overseas and out of reach of U.S. law.

It is unlikely the movie companies that sued will get nearly the total damages. Valence Media's principals have declared bankruptcy. Valence is based in Nevis, a Caribbean island, and has filed for bankruptcy protection. The defendants plan to appeal, their lawyer, Ira Rothken, said."

Related Links

YouTube coughs up record royalties to PRS

According to the The Inquirer, "UK's Performing Right Society (PRS) believes that composers, singer/songwriters and music publishers are going to be getting bumper payouts this year and for a while to come, after a deal between the organisation and the video sharing website, YouTube.

Already in the first three months of 2008, the PRS claims to have doled out an unprecedented £110m ($219m) to their talented musical muses, which is apparently a good 30 per cent more than they had to shell out last year.

This, the organisation believes, is mostly thanks to a licensing deal struck with the online video giant YouTube, which now pays royalties on clips of songs (original or covered) uploaded and watched on the site."

French TV broadcaster TF1 sues YouTube

French daily Les Echos reports that private French TV channel TF1 has filed a lawsuit against YouTube and is seeking damages of $158.3 million.

"A YouTube spokesman quoted by the newspaper said the suit had been received a few days ago in California but would be judged in Paris.

A TF1 spokesman declined to comment on the report."

[via Ecrans and Reuters]

The Pirate Bay Demands Compensation for IFPI Block

The Pirate Bay has announced that it will file a complaint to ask for compensation from the IFPI for the traffic which was destined for its site, but blocked by the Danish ISP Tele2. If they win, the money will be spent on funding independent artists who share their music for free on filesharing sites.

In February, a Danish court ordered the ISP “Tele2" to block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay. The decision, which is currently under appeal, once again heated the debate on ISPs Internet filtering.

[via Neowin]

European Parliament says "no" to disconnecting P2P users

The European Parliament thinks that the three-strikes-and-you're-offline approach to copyright enforcement championed by the IFPI and the French government is a bad idea, approving an amendment to that effect yesterday.

By a 314-297 vote, the European Parliament has signaled its opposition to recent initiatives to kick users off the Internet for repeated copyright infringement.

[via arts technica]

Fox internet video, now with watermarks in every packet

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has signed up with USVO's MediaEscort technology to add watermarking to its arsenal, reports Engadget HD.

"MediaEscort is suited for the growing internet streaming market, and embeds watermarks during content delivery. Thus, if either the legitimate recipient or an online interloper decides to "share the wealth," there's forensic evidence that can be used to figure out both where the leak occurred and how big it is."

LegalTorrents

LegalTorrents, one of the oldest and most prominent destinations for legal BitTorrent downloads, is relaunching today, and its new version offers a bunch of new features for users and content creators alike, among them a donation system to offer content creators a way to monetize P2P.

[via NewTeeVee]

Korean TV networks demand YouTube tackle illegal uploads

South Korea's three major broadcasters said Friday they have called forYouTube's local unit to tackle unauthorized uploads of their TV programs, reports The Hankyhore.

"The demand over intellectual property rights is the first of its kind in South Korea since YouTube, the world's most popular video-sharing Web site owned by Google Inc., launched a Korean-language version of its service in January.

South Korean broadcasters, including the state-run Korea Broadcasting System, sent a joint letter of protest to YouTube's subsidiary in Seoul, demanding the company stop allowing uploads of copyrighted video content.

"YouTube Korea's service has significantly infringed on the protected contents of the three broadcasters," the broadcasters said in a statement.

The broadcasters expect "YouTube to comply with local laws on intellectual property rights," according to the statement.

Unless YouTube takes aggressive action against the unauthorized uploads, the broadcasters will take legal measures, the statement said."

Sweden plans to force Internet companies to release data on online pirates

Swedish courts will soon be able to force the country's Internet providers to hand out information on suspected file-sharers in a move to crackdown on online piracy, the culture and justice ministers said Friday.

Sweden has long been criticized as a safe haven for online piracy since it hosts the popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay.

... Sweden's Pirate Party, however, which received 0.6 percent of the votes in the 2006 elections and who lobbies for an open information society, called the move a "sanctioned blackmailing operation," saying it was a major intrusion in people's right to privacy."

[via The Sydney Morning Herald. Image from boingboing]

Did DivX close Stage6 to duck copyright litigation?

News.com reports that DivX, parent company of defunct video-sharing site Stage6 on Tuesday disclosed how it came to the decision to shutter the service rather than to sell.

"Potential copyright litigation" was one of management's top considerations leading up to the shuttering of Stage6, Dan Halvorson, DivX's chief financial officer, said during a conference call to announce the public company's fourth-quarter earnings.

There was reason for concern. Turns out DivX, a maker of Internet-video technologies, had lost a bid to avoid fighting costly copyright suits just a few weeks before Stage6 was closed, records show."

Initially, the company said "that the continued operation of Stage6 was a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide."

[via NewTeeVee]

ISPs could face piracy sanctions

Internet service providers must take concrete steps to curb illegal downloads or face legal sanctions, the government has said, reports the BBC.

"The proposal is aimed at tackling the estimated 6m UK broadband users who download files illegally every year. The culture secretary said consultation would begin in spring and legislation could be implemented "by April 2009".

... Earlier this year it was reported that the government was considering a "three strikes" approach to tackling persistent offenders in the report.

But Mr Burnham denied this was the case and told the FT that the strategy had "never been in the paper".

If the government goes ahead, the UK would be one of the first countries to impose sanctions. "

Related article from The Guardian:

-- Filesharing law 'unworkable' - The UK government's plan to fight online piracy is doomed to fail... clamping down on illegal sharing of copyrighted music and movies would be technologically unworkable and create a legal minefield, experts have warned.

... "The big issue, frankly, is the impossibility of the internet service providers getting in amongst it and monitoring what goes on on their networks," warned Alex Brown, internet law specialist at Simmons & Simmons. Technically speaking, it's near impossible to do. The sheer volume of traffic means it just cannot be done fast enough.

Australian Government To Take Legal Action Versus Illegal 'Downloaders'

Internet users who download content illegally beware. The Australian government is planning to enact a legislation that would legally require Internet service providers to penalize illegal 'downloaders'.

Based on the proposal, which is similar to legislation planned in the United Kingdom and France, offenders will be subject to a three-strikes policy. The campaign is focused on Internet users who illegally share copyrighted material, such as movies, videos and music.

[via All Headline News]

Yahoo! Filters Pirate Bay From Search Results

TorrentFreak reports that "as of this weekend, Yahoo started to filter some of The Pirate Bay’s pages. For some mysterious reason, several pages from the tracker disappeared from Yahoo’s index. Unintentionally or not, a search for “The Pirate Bay” doesn’t show a link to the homepage of the popular BitTorrent tracker.

Filtering or blocking the Pirate Bay is beginning to become a trend. Little over a week ago, a Danish court ordered the ISP “Tele2" to block its customers access to The Pirate Bay. Soon after that the Kuwait government decided to do the same, and now Yahoo is also censoring the Internet.

... It seems like The Pirate Bay is the only BitTorrent site that is filtered at the moment. Searches for Mininova and Isohunt are still working fine, Yahoo! even suggests you should try “mininova torrents”, “mininova downloads” and “mininova today downloads”, and more related searches.

Illegal downloaders 'face UK ban'

People in the UK who go online and illegally download music and films may have their internet access cut under plans the government is considering, reports the BBC.

"A draft consultation Green Paper suggests internet service providers would be required to take action over users who access pirated material.

Under a "three strikes" rule they would receive an e-mail warning, suspension, and then termination of their contract.

... The proposals are part of a Green Paper - a consultation document issued by the government - on the creative industries that is due to be published next week."

The proposal is similar to legislation proposed in France by Nicolas Sarkozy last month.

Sweden to charge Pirate Bay in copyright case

According to Reuters, "Sweden plans this week to charge the people running Pirate Bay, one of the world's most visited Web sites, with being accessories in breaking copyright law.

Pirate Bay helps Web surfers share copyrighted music and film files, which is illegal in many countries, including Sweden.

The charges will be filed in a district court on January 31.

The Motion Picture Association of America and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) are among those who have called for action to shut down the site."

AT&T considers filtering for pirated content

AT&T is considering using filtering technology to stop pirated content from traversing its network, according to a New York Times blog posted from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. News.com reports.

"According to the blog, James Cicconi, senior vice president, external and legal affairs for AT&T, said during a panel discussion Tuesday about digital piracy that the carrier is already discussing the possibility of using filtering technology with content companies like NBC Universal.

"We are very interested in a technology-based solution, and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this," Cicconi said in the New York Times blog. "We recognize we are not there yet but there are a lot of promising technologies."

Filtering is already used on sites like YouTube and Microsoft's Soapbox to keep copyrighted videos from being shared illegally. But using this kind of technology on a much wider scale at the network level is controversial and has stirred up protest from some consumer groups."

Software lets Canadians view blocked U.S. shows online

There's a dirty little secret shared amongst hardy Web users looking to access online content that is only available within the United States, writes the Financial Post.

"As American television networks block international users from watching top shows such as Lost or Grey's Anatomy online due to complex licensing agreements, software is widely and easily available that circumvents "geoblocking" practices at no cost to consumers.

Here's how it works: using what is known as a "virtual private network," Canadian Web users are able to log on to a server that will take an IP address that a Web site would read as coming from Canada and change it to look like a U.S. computer. Although the technology has been around for the past decade, it is only recently that savvy online users have been able to figure out that it can also work to watch previously inaccessible digital content.

Furthermore, you're not breaking any laws in Canada by bypassing country-specific Web sites, says entertainment lawyer David Zitzerman.

Although the practice may violate a statute in the United States' widely lambasted Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Mr. Zitzerman says, there is so far no copyright legislation in Canada that would prohibit anyone from visiting American-only Web sites under the guise of a non-Canadian IP address."

BitTorrent search site loses case

TorrentSpy, a website which facilitated the online exchange of films, music and TV programmes without permission has lost a US copyright case. The BBC reports.

"A judge made a default ruling in favour of the MPAA after she said the site's operators had tampered with evidence.

The site had ignored an order to retain server logs and the unique online addresses of computers which traded files using the
BitTorrent program.

The ruling could have personal privacy implications because the information TorrentSpy had been told to retain was held in Random Access Memory of computers."

TF1 To Sue Dailymotion, YouTube With €140 Million Copyright Claim: Report

French TV network TF1 will sue Dailymotion in the coming weeks for letting pirated copies of its shows be published online, according to French news magazine Le Point. Paid Content reports.

"The general-interest broadcaster is claiming copyright abuse of 38.95 million euros (£24 million) against Paris-based Dailymotion and is requesting it remove the videos in question or face a 10,000 euro per-video penalty, while it’s claiming 100 million euro (£72 million) against YouTube, the report says.

Interestingly, TF1 has a formula for the the alleged aggravation - for every 100 videos viewed for free on sharing sites, it loses 20 commercial VOD sales, it is said to believe."

Porn producer sues PornoTube

A major porn producer filed a lawsuit Monday against PornoTube, an X-rated knockoff of YouTube, alleging that it profited from piracy by allowing its users to post videos that include copyrighted material. The LA Times reports.

"The suit is apparently the first of its kind in the adult film industry, which has done a better job than the major Hollywood studios in finding ways to profit from putting entertainment products on the Internet."

[via NewTeeVee]

Swiss DMCA coming down -- 50,000 signatures needed to unmake it

Dave sez wrote in a note to to boingboing, November 28.

On the 5th of October 2007, the Swiss law makers adopted a new law to comply with the WIPO treaties. Thanks to the entertainment lobbies, apart from criminalizing DRM circumvention devices, you can now win a one year visit in jail if you share a copyrighted file on a P2P network.

Did anybody hear about this new law ? No. Not even Swiss citizens. The media is quiet about this.

The thing is, Switzerland uses a direct democracy system, and this new law could be the subject to a federal vote if 50,000 people sign a request for it. That's called a Referendum request, and the deadline for its deposit is the 24th of January 2008. If there's no Referendum request by then, the law will become effective.

There's little doubt that if federal votes were to made today, the law would pass anyway. But at least a public debate could be created around the issue and people could react.

Now, 3 weeks later, here's the Referendeum. 50'000 signatures must be collected before January 24th 2008. They have to be checked by the municipality of the respective signatory. [via Lunch over IP]

NHK' system traces counterfeit works distributed over the Internet

NHK ( Japan Broadcasting Corporation) on Wednesday unveiled a new system to put hidden identifiers into films to trace counterfeit works distributed over the Internet.

The system, developed with Mitsubishi Electric Corp, consists of highly detailed electronic signals which are put inside films and other visual works but invisible to the human eye.

If a person copies the film at a cinema or in front of a television screen, his or her camera will automatically tape the signal which will stay in the machine's memory.

Automatic software can then search the Internet using the coded signal to find any works that have been illegally copied.

The code can also help authorities trace the exact cinema and screening at which the person illegally taped a film.

[via Fareastgizmos]

Movie Director Uses BitTorrent as Lawyers Chase Those Downloading His Movie

“I download lots of TV-shows, I’ll admit that. But it’s also about them already having been aired on TV, and have kinda been accessible for free already. I also think it’s stupid to have to wait for six or seven months to get to watch a TV-show that’s already been aired in the USA.” - Tommy Wirkola, the director of a successful Norwegian Kill Bill parody movie who admits to downloading TV shows via BitTorrent himself and doesn’t support his distributor as they take legal action against his fans.

[via TorrentFreak]

France set to cut Web access for music, film pirates

Internet users in France who frequently download music or films illegally risk losing Web Internet access under a new anti-piracy system unveiled on Friday, backed by French president Nicolas Sarkozy. [via Reuters]

"... Under the agreement - drawn up by a commission headed by the chief executive of FNAC, one of France's biggest music and film retailers - service providers will issue warning messages to customers downloading files illegally.

If users ignore those messages, their accounts could be suspended or closed altogether."

Can watching streaming video of copyright material get a viewer in trouble?

Several weeks ago, I sent an e-mail to the Open Rights Group, asking how illegal was it to watch copyright content in streaming - like the latest new TV series - from video sharing sites, as it seems less harmful than downloading a copy to your hard drive.

Below you will find my query and their response - cautioning though that they are not lawyers nor do they offer legal advisory services. These are their thoughts, to the best of their knowledge:

Question: Following the TV Links shut down, a US copyright lawyer is quoted as saying watching streaming content (of illegally posted videos) is illegal. Does this entail (American) viewers could possibly be fined or arrested for watching streaming video? And in other countries, would this depend on the copyright laws of the country?

Answer: EU law offers an exemption for temporary copies which don't have economic significance. So the legal theory in the EU is that you are not making a copy of the original (as you would with a download where a new copy is stored on your local drive).

This means you're not liable for copyright infringement in the EU. However, its different in the US, where academics suggest the law is broken.

Although there is supposed to be a special dispensation for streaming, courts have held that temporary copies can be infringing.

Although I sympathize and agree that streaming infringing content is really common, it seems you are right to suggest it depends where in the world you're watching the stream, and also that American viewers in particular should take care.

KDDI Develops Pirated-Video-Detecting Software

KDDI research labs in Japan has developed a new system for detecting pirated material on the internet automatically. By detecting whether the footage was shot on an amateur or professional camera, what method was used to encode it, and things of that nature, they claim they can detect illegal material with a 98% success rate.

[via Gizmodo]

Combating Piracy: Earth To Big TV

Tech Crunch dishes advice to the television industry on how to fight piracy. Excerpts:

1. It’s all about choice - Big TV needs to provide their shows in a variety of formats to suit as many people as possible.

2. Imposed geographic restrictions no longer work - It’s all about international distribution deals, the crappy deals that mean that viewers in Europe and Australasia can sometimes wait 2-3 years to view content broadcast in the United States. This delay is the reason 59% of the French watch television on their computers. You want to dramatically reduce piracy? Then open up your content to the world.

3. Always On, Always Available - Let your consumers decide how long TV shows should be available as opposed to imposing arbitrary restrictions

4. Stop treating your audience as if it were stupid - Your audience is increasingly turning to alternatives because of your restrictive practices,

Piracy derailed biz growth, report says

The ready availability of pirated material is largely to blame for a slowdown in the film, television and music industries after years of uninterrupted growth, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The Hollywood Reporter reports.

"In a 400-page report on counterfeiting and piracy published Monday, the Paris-based OECD notes declining royalties, a drop in the number of performers kept under contract and job losses in the entertainment industry's production, manufacturing and retailing arms.

"... The piracy problems faced by the music and film industries seem considerably worse than other sectors, because ... in the age of digital recording technology, the product is generally authentic and the quality of the pirated copies can be very good."

The report said the situation is likely to worsen, as online transfers eliminate the need to transport the pirated goods long distances or across customs borders, which is when such goods are most at risk of being apprehended."

Policing copyright will never work

It's all the rage these days: crackpot proposals to automatically police the internet for copyright violations, stopping them even before they occur. Each different filtering option involves identifying false positives and are an incredible invasion of privacy to boot. And can't work, according to Cory Doctorow in an article for The Guardian.

"Remaking the internet to invade privacy and silence our conversations is a crummy idea, but even worse is the fact that it won't actually stop or even slow infringement. But for so long as there are technology companies with magic beans to sell - and desperate, ageing entertainment execs willing to buy them - we'll have to keep fighting.

"From YouTube's promise to find and stamp out copyright infringing uploads to the counterproposal from the motion picture studios and Microsoft to find and stamp out infringing uploads, everyone is getting in on the act.

The problem is, it's all lies, wishful thinking and irresponsible promises. "

Why was someone arrested over the TV Links website?

The Guardian looks into the legitimity of arresting someone over the TV Links website.

"According to the Gloucester police, the arrest was carried out for alleged violations of Section 92 of the Trade Marks Act.

... Alex, writing on the Impact blog from UK law firm Freeth Cartwright, agrees. "On the facts that we know so far, it is difficult to see how the providing of links to infringing copies of TV shows gives rise to a civil or criminal liability under UK law," he said.

The Trade Marks Act may not fit the alleged crime. "The Trade Marks Act makes the unauthorised use of trade marks in relation to goods an offence; but this is a law that was written to catch counterfeit goods," said Kim Walker, head of intellectual property at Pinsent Masons. "The provision of links is surely a service, not a sale of goods. It seems an unlikely way to deal with the problem."

Alex at Freeth Cartwright says: "Such links might constitute an offence under other parts of copyright law (distributing infringing copies or communicating copies to the public in the course of business), but it is again difficult to see how the facts meet these offences."

TV-Links man released

According to The Register, the 26-year-old Cheltenham man at the centre of an investigation into the website TV-Links has not been charged with any offense, and has been released pending further investigation.