President of the Recording Industry Association of America Cary Sherman said recently they were looking forward to the law formalizing the “voluntary” cooperation between rights owners and service providers to tackle unauthorized file-sharing. Moreover, they want such cooperation to extend to advertisers, payment processors, and search engines.
Another day, another announcement from the RIAA, keeping telling and doing the things more disturbing than ever before. For example, recently the RIAA President Cary Sherman told the public at a Technology Policy Institute forum held in Aspen, Colorado that the DMCA is completely failing rights owners. He insists that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act needs to be revised and include another provision allowing Internet service providers and others to filter the web of copyrighted content.
Cary Sherman said that day that the DMCA was not working for content people. All the infringements can’t be monitored on the Internet, because it’s just not possible. The music industry isn’t able to search all the locations containing infringing material, like cyberlockers, as it appears new every second.
That is the exact reality of the new digital world, but the RIAA would prefer to make another attempt to break the Internet to satisfy its own economic demands rather than to give it a try and figure out how to adapt to the new reality. Everyone understands there’s no way to completely stop the unauthorized transfer of copyrighted content short of information packet inspection.
The RIAA President highlights that they are looking for a “voluntary” cooperation with broadband providers, and even advertisers, search engines, and payment processors. They believe such co-operation would help stop unauthorized file-sharing. The only thing, he believes, they lack now is the law that would encourage this kind of cooperation, though not mandate it.
In fact, the story of the RIAA’s partnership with ISPs is not a long one, if any. Two years ago the outfit claimed to switch from its strategy of fighting individual file-sharers to cooperation with service providers to filter copyrighted content and disconnect repeat infringers (in other words, implement voluntary “three-strikes” regime. So far no ISPs have chosen to cooperate with the RIAA, and you can guess why. So why can’t the RIAA?
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
Anti-Piracy Campaigns Fail, People Keep Downloading
For as long as Internet file-sharing has been considered a problem, copyright holders and their respective anti-piracy groups have been mobilizing with campaigns they hope can reduce the phenomenon. Despite the efforts, downloading continues unabated. Against the law? One in four in Denmark certainly don’t.
During the last decade anti-piracy campaigns have taken many forms. Warnings running on the beginning of a DVD, for example, are fairly straightforward and to the point – “don’t copy this, it’s illegal”, they said.
Other approaches, such as the super high-profile and aggressive litigation campaign pursued by the RIAA in the United States, tried to send the message that financial ruination is the inevitable result of sharing music files.
The movie industry’s MPAA tried a “we’re looking over your shoulder” angle with their Internet-only ‘You Can Click But You Can’t Hide’ campaign which was designed to reinforce the notion that file-sharers are not anonymous and can be held accountable.
Untold other campaigns from a myriad of anti-piracy groups followed, from educating kids in schools and persuading boy scouts to take a copyright awareness badges, right up to trying to convincing the public that there is a human consequence to sharing files. Creators everywhere will starve, entertainment will come to an end, and this dark future can only be avoided by buying media instead of downloading it, they cautioned.
Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, Denmark’s Antipiratgruppen have been working tirelessly with anti-piracy activities of all kinds during recent years as they desperately try to discourage people from downloading media from the Internet. In common with similar campaigns from America to Asia, the end results are largely the same – they have failed to reduce the overall numbers of people sharing files.
That’s according to a new survey conducted by YouGov Zapera on behalf of publication MetroXpress. Carried out during the first week of August 2010, the survey consisted of interviews with a representative sample of people aged between 18 and 74 years old.
When questioned, 23% of respondents said that they had the ability to find and download music and movies from the Internet. In 2009 that figure was 20%. When it came to music alone, 27% of respondents said they had downloaded from the Internet. In 2009 that figure was 24%.
Troels Møller from pro-piracy group Piratgruppen said that the lack of progress comes as no surprise.
“The advertising campaigns used to prevent illegal downloads have been a waste of money and have in general been a cop-out from the record industry,” he told MetroXpress. “They try to give people a bad conscience about something that there is nothing wrong with. Because you are not stealing from anyone. On the contrary, you are sharing with others.”
Bente Skovgaard Kristensen, who is responsible for copyright issues at the Ministry of Culture, says that the problem of illegal downloading is massive.
“The unchanged position on the course of piracy shows that there is a problem,” she admitted in a response. “Because the scope of copyright violations on the Internet is so large the Government has appointed a committee to look at how to deal with the issue. They report back with their findings later this year.”
The only area where opinion was slightly improved was in that concerning legislation. In 2009, 31% of respondents said that they felt copying of music and movies should be made legal. This year that figure dropped to 30%.
During the last decade anti-piracy campaigns have taken many forms. Warnings running on the beginning of a DVD, for example, are fairly straightforward and to the point – “don’t copy this, it’s illegal”, they said.
Other approaches, such as the super high-profile and aggressive litigation campaign pursued by the RIAA in the United States, tried to send the message that financial ruination is the inevitable result of sharing music files.
The movie industry’s MPAA tried a “we’re looking over your shoulder” angle with their Internet-only ‘You Can Click But You Can’t Hide’ campaign which was designed to reinforce the notion that file-sharers are not anonymous and can be held accountable.
Untold other campaigns from a myriad of anti-piracy groups followed, from educating kids in schools and persuading boy scouts to take a copyright awareness badges, right up to trying to convincing the public that there is a human consequence to sharing files. Creators everywhere will starve, entertainment will come to an end, and this dark future can only be avoided by buying media instead of downloading it, they cautioned.
Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, Denmark’s Antipiratgruppen have been working tirelessly with anti-piracy activities of all kinds during recent years as they desperately try to discourage people from downloading media from the Internet. In common with similar campaigns from America to Asia, the end results are largely the same – they have failed to reduce the overall numbers of people sharing files.
That’s according to a new survey conducted by YouGov Zapera on behalf of publication MetroXpress. Carried out during the first week of August 2010, the survey consisted of interviews with a representative sample of people aged between 18 and 74 years old.
When questioned, 23% of respondents said that they had the ability to find and download music and movies from the Internet. In 2009 that figure was 20%. When it came to music alone, 27% of respondents said they had downloaded from the Internet. In 2009 that figure was 24%.
Troels Møller from pro-piracy group Piratgruppen said that the lack of progress comes as no surprise.
“The advertising campaigns used to prevent illegal downloads have been a waste of money and have in general been a cop-out from the record industry,” he told MetroXpress. “They try to give people a bad conscience about something that there is nothing wrong with. Because you are not stealing from anyone. On the contrary, you are sharing with others.”
Bente Skovgaard Kristensen, who is responsible for copyright issues at the Ministry of Culture, says that the problem of illegal downloading is massive.
“The unchanged position on the course of piracy shows that there is a problem,” she admitted in a response. “Because the scope of copyright violations on the Internet is so large the Government has appointed a committee to look at how to deal with the issue. They report back with their findings later this year.”
The only area where opinion was slightly improved was in that concerning legislation. In 2009, 31% of respondents said that they felt copying of music and movies should be made legal. This year that figure dropped to 30%.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Apple Ready For Anti-Theft Patent?
There have been a bit of commotion online concerning a new Apple’s patent request. The company is reported to create a new patent intended to stop jailbreaking. Around a month ago, DMCA review put forth the option for someone to jailbreak the phone without violating anti-circumvention legislation (still can be committed only under specific circumstances). It was also ruled by the court that the act of circumvention itself is not an infringement.
The Apple was reported to patent the power to remotely disable jailbroken phones. However, the reports made online by third party services were not purely true. One of them sent readers to the patent application, mentioning a jailbroken phone only by telling whether the one was stolen or not. Apparently, this seems to do nothing about the company’s intention disabling jailbroken iPhones. However, the report discusses what Apple is planning to do with devices that have been stolen and later used by “illegal” users. Meanwhile, the second report also barely touches the topic of Apple trying to patent the option to disable jailbroken phones remotely, as the patent was filed over a year ago. Still, it doesn’t make the idea of the patent uninteresting. The statements of the claim include methods for identifying an illegal user of a device, gathering data related to their operations, and sending an alert warning to a responsible party.
As it has been said above, the patent was filed in the early 2009, so the overview of the prior documents might be interesting in terms of putting this patent into question. For example, a 5-year-old article in Forbes details similar ideas to those described in the claims, with the emphasis given to the point where it says about detecting an illegal user of an “electronic device,” which is obviously not a phone specifically, but rather any device. As for the Forbes article, it was devoted to laptop theft and included the same claims: identifying an IP address of the stolen device, if it is used in unauthorized hands, and creating notifications about it. The part of sending an alert to the responsible party was also fulfilled by informing local law enforcement of a place where the stolen device was located.
What all this leading to is the fact that the prior art to a patent has already been filed previously, which can put the validity of the Apple’s patent in jeopardy.
The Apple was reported to patent the power to remotely disable jailbroken phones. However, the reports made online by third party services were not purely true. One of them sent readers to the patent application, mentioning a jailbroken phone only by telling whether the one was stolen or not. Apparently, this seems to do nothing about the company’s intention disabling jailbroken iPhones. However, the report discusses what Apple is planning to do with devices that have been stolen and later used by “illegal” users. Meanwhile, the second report also barely touches the topic of Apple trying to patent the option to disable jailbroken phones remotely, as the patent was filed over a year ago. Still, it doesn’t make the idea of the patent uninteresting. The statements of the claim include methods for identifying an illegal user of a device, gathering data related to their operations, and sending an alert warning to a responsible party.
As it has been said above, the patent was filed in the early 2009, so the overview of the prior documents might be interesting in terms of putting this patent into question. For example, a 5-year-old article in Forbes details similar ideas to those described in the claims, with the emphasis given to the point where it says about detecting an illegal user of an “electronic device,” which is obviously not a phone specifically, but rather any device. As for the Forbes article, it was devoted to laptop theft and included the same claims: identifying an IP address of the stolen device, if it is used in unauthorized hands, and creating notifications about it. The part of sending an alert to the responsible party was also fulfilled by informing local law enforcement of a place where the stolen device was located.
What all this leading to is the fact that the prior art to a patent has already been filed previously, which can put the validity of the Apple’s patent in jeopardy.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
U2 Band Manager Accused ISPs Of Profiting From Piracy
Paul McGuiness, U2 band manager, believes that illegal file-sharing constitutes a part of a commercial agenda of large telecoms and technology industries, earning high money at the expense of right owners.
Paul McGuiness, a longtime band manager for U2, argues that Internet service providers are to be blamed for the damage unauthorized file-sharing has done to the record industry. In addition he claims that ISPs have been profiting over the years at the record industry’s expense.
McGuiness says that despite the fact that service providers introduce themselves as neutral bystanders, they have contributed much to the depreciation of music and all the consequences it caused to the music industry. What ISPs did wrong is that they failed to aggressively sanction unauthorized file-sharing users.
U2 band manager highlights that faster connection speeds, for which service providers normally increase subscription fees, are actually only developed for illegally downloading customers. He refuses to believe that users may want more bandwidth to speed up their e-mails, but increasing the speed of downloading illegal content sounds as a good reason.
Paul McGuiness, a longtime band manager for U2, argues that Internet service providers are to be blamed for the damage unauthorized file-sharing has done to the record industry. In addition he claims that ISPs have been profiting over the years at the record industry’s expense.
McGuiness says that despite the fact that service providers introduce themselves as neutral bystanders, they have contributed much to the depreciation of music and all the consequences it caused to the music industry. What ISPs did wrong is that they failed to aggressively sanction unauthorized file-sharing users.
U2 band manager highlights that faster connection speeds, for which service providers normally increase subscription fees, are actually only developed for illegally downloading customers. He refuses to believe that users may want more bandwidth to speed up their e-mails, but increasing the speed of downloading illegal content sounds as a good reason.
He also says that free material is a part of commercial agenda of large technology firms and broadband providers that need more content to create demand for services they provide. To prove this Paul McGuiness points at the figures of the past decade. Profits derived from the Internet access (both fixed line and mobile) quadruplicated within the last 5 years, while record industry revenues fell twice.
His argument sound reasonable for a number of reasons. First of all, considering that the memory storage capacity of portable players like iPod is huge, expecting people to fill it with legally acquired music isn’t reasonable at all, as it may cost up to $16,000. Is McGuiness ready to spend that much money for filling the music player? Guess not. So that’s why people download the content illegally or share music with family and friends. Although the manufacturers, for example Apple, are aware of the situation, they keep increasing the memory storage capacity to charge users more.
Also the ISPs advertise faster connection speeds to charge users more as well, though most people need only surf the Internet and check email.
So he’s probably right when considering that companies won’t stop using illegal file-sharing to profit. Still, they only have to do that because of inability of rights owners to adapt to a new business model.
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