US Government Interested In Swedish Anti-Piracy Efforts

Wikileaks is about to release a cable from the American Embassy in Stockholm, which reveals that the US government was interested in file-sharing issues in Sweden. Actually, the American Embassy was cooperating with the Swedish government in order to reduce file-sharing threats. This cooperation resulted in The Pirate Bay raids in 2006 conducted under the US pressure.

Actually, everybody knew that the American government has been actively participating in copyright enforcement in many other countries throughout the world, Sweden being one of them. The raid on TPB’s servers back in 2006 proved that the United States had threatened to put Sweden on the WTO’s blacklist if they fail to solve The Pirate Bay problem.

However, that was far from the end of the US-Sweden collaboration on this front. Wikileaks is going to publish a US Embassy cable in possession of Swedish Television, proving that the American pressure on Sweden to settle the file-sharing problems went on in the following years. In the cable, dated back 2 years ago, the American Embassy outlined 6 items they wanted to be solved, all of them connected with online copyright violation. Just in a year, 5 of those 6 items were turned into action. Among them were appointment of more copyright police and educational anti-piracy campaigns. As you might have already guessed, The Pirate Bay tracker was mentioned in this cable, too.

It is said in the cable that it was not easy for the US Embassy to get openly involved in piracy issues, as a lot of press coverage was unfavorable towards them. This made Minister of Justice to deny that Sweden was ever under the US pressure in piracy related issues.

Meanwhile, ex-Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde seems to be surprised about the leaked cable’s content, even though it wasn’t news for him that the US put pressure on the Swedish authorities. He admitted that it was known for a long while that the United States was hiding behind the raid and pressured Sweden. However, it was news to them that they were still doing it.

This cable hasn’t been published by well-known service Wikileaks yet. However, it is expected that they will release it in the near future. This, along with some other cables, can add more insight into the backroom deals connected with file-sharing and copyright infringement.

US Government Interested in Swedish Anti-Piracy Efforts

Michael Jackson’s New Album Leaked Online

New star’s album “Michael” has already appeared on BitTorrent trackers all over the world before its official release date, which is December, 14th.

This album of Michael Jackson followed the way of lots of other hotly anticipated albums that have leaked to the Internet and now can be found on any BitTorrent tracker website throughout the world. The leak of this particular album happened over a week prior to its official release date – December, 14th.

New album called “Michael” contains 10 Michael Jackson’s tracks recorded from 2001 to 2009. This leak means that all of them are currently available to anyone who is able to use BitTorrent client, and they are not the snippets that a label, Sony, has been offering piecemeal in order to spur interest, but the full-fledged songs.

Although this leak will most likely have no effect on sales (i.e. lead to any tangible decline), it can become the useful prove for those rights owners that are looking forward to persuading US Congress to pass the controversial COICA legislation (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act). The latter is supposed to provide the Justice Department with an expedited process for tracing and closing down domains of websites involved in providing access to illegal downloads, as well as to online streaming or sale of copyrighted material and counterfeit products.

Actually, no artist has been spared having their album leak to BitTorrent websites. So, Michael Jackson is just following in the footsteps of many other artists, such as U2, Eminem, Kings of Leon and many, many more. The most interesting fact in all this is that some of the artists have shown quite curious responds to the cases of leak. For example, U2 the band made a decision to respond by offering free streaming of their own album “No Line On The Horizon” on MySpace network.

Although Sony never expressed its attitude to the leak, one can be sure that it isn’t that happy and is going to somehow respond to news. While many fans of Michael Jackson can already enjoy his works for free, this may have the opposite effect over time, especially if Sony decided to take a closer look at last Billboard’s list of “5 Easy Steps to Plug Online Music Leaks.”

MPAA Started Warning College Students

The Motion Picture Association of America started sending out warning letters to higher education institutions in the US, calling them to defend the interests of the entertainment industry. Besides, the MPAA made an announcement that it is going to start sending notifications to college and university students involved in unauthorized sharing of films on campus networks. Apparently, those students who fail to abide will face the consequences.

The Recording Industry Association of America is well-known for pursuing college students with DMCA takedown notices and full lawsuits. Meanwhile, the MPAA didn’t seem to be active on this front. Of course, individual film companies sent lots of infringement notices, but all those campaigns had nothing to do with the MPAA, until now.

Now the MPAA is ready to notify all college presidents that it is going to change that policy. In the meantime, the entertainment industry outfit will call institutions to do their best to stop unauthorized downloading on college campus networks.

The United States enforced a new requirement for educational institutions to stop illegal file-sharing on their networks back this summer. The law actually puts defiant colleges at risk of losing federal funding in case they fail to stop the illegal activity. With all this in mind, the MPAA wrote a letter to the universities, where it politely asks the schools to help the entertainment industry fight the piracy. At the same time, between the lines the copyright outfit also noted that colleges, which won’t be working hard enough to implement proper policies, may lose federal funding.

The MPAA added that it will also get involved in sending notifications to higher education institutions for any unauthorized activity detected. However, the Motion Pictures Association of America doesn’t just warn schools, it also offers solutions. For example, it recommends the universities to block their students and employees access to illegal websites. This literally means filtering BitTorrent search engines and indexes like TPB and isoHunt.

Commercial censorship is not the only way of fighting piracy. The MPAA’s suggestions also include less aggressive methods like so called “educational seminars” and monitoring the downloading habits of college students.

Tubeify: New Service Combined YouTube, Last.fm, And Billboard

More and more people today use YouTube as an instant music player. However, it has drawbacks – for example, while it’s fine for single tracks, it can’t serve as the music video jukebox users would love to see. The problem is finally solved with Tubeify coming in, mashing up Youtube, Last.fm, and Billboard, convenient for both musical time travelers and casual listeners. This new service allows you to search for, play and queue video clips in your favorite web browser. 

Although the service has just appeared, it’s clear that it will become one of the best YouTube jukeboxes around, with its great search capabilities and outstanding usability. The most attractive feature of the service is the Billboard “timetravel” option, which allows you to pull up the Billboard chart for any week you wish, starting from 1964 and then listen to the songs leading the charts then.

The author of the idea of Tubeify is Tomas Isdal, a student of University of Washington PhD, well-known for BitTorrent-related research projects like OneSwarm or the DMCA printer study.The current idea, Tubeify, isn’t a research anymore, but just a good way to turn YouTube into a great music player.

Before, many people were annoyed by the videos stopping when another song was being searched for, as well as by many duplicate search results. In addition, the playlist couldn’t boast rich functionality. However, YouTube had the decided advantage – a huge archive of music with lots of both licensed and unlicensed tracks.

Tomas simply tried to make it feel more like a familiar desktop music player like iTunes and Spotify. At the same time, the player was supposed to be web-based to make people able to use it anywhere. The result of his attempt is quite a useful mashup of Billboard, Last.fm and YouTube.

The searching of the Tubeify is handled by the Last.fm api. It differs from YouTube by the fact that the current track goes on playing while another is being searched for. The search results serve as so-called “lazy playlists”, able to be “pinned” to the sidebar so that you could easily access them later. Drag&Drop support makes adding tracks to playlists the easiest thing. Finally, the most exiting feature is the possibility to share playlists with your friends – just paste the playlist links anywhere (Twitter, Facebook, email) to provide your friends with instant access to it.

Visit Tubeify here.