Free Republic

EU ACTA Analysis Leaks: Confirms Plans For Global DMCA, Encourage 3 Strikes Model Monday November 30, 2009 The European Commission analysis of ACTA's Internet chapter has leaked, indicating that the U.S. is seeking to push laws that extend beyond the WIPO Internet treaties and beyond current European Union law (the EC posted the existence of the document last week but refused to make it publicly available). The document contains detailed comments on the U.S. proposal, confirming the U.S. desire to promote a three-strikes and you're out policy, a Global DMCA, harmonized contributory copyright infringement rules, and the establishment of an...

. . Once Again, Entertainment Industry Looks To Force Massive Copyright Changes Via Int'l Treaties from the how-the-game-is-played dept By now you should know that one of the entertainment industry's favorite tools for forcing ever more draconian copyright laws around the world is to use international treaties. Such treaties are not put together by elected officials, but appointed diplomats, often with tremendous input (to the point of allowing them to write the details) from industries that are protected. Then, once those treaties are in place, copyright maximalists just get to sit back and say "but we must make our copyright...

The MPAA apparently said that the “enemies of copyright have really done a good job at creating the false premise that the interest of copyright holders and the interest of society as a whole are antagonistic” during the World Copyright Summit. The worry is that their pro-copyright advocacy perspective is fading away in the public conscious. In an interesting report from IP-Watch where there were a few choice words levelled against those that disagreed with the view-points of the copyright industry. Apparently, Fritz Attaway suggested that it's false to assume that the rights of the industry and the interest of...

John McCain's presidential campaign has discovered the remix-unfriendly aspects of American copyright law, after several of the candidate's campaign videos were pulled from YouTube. McCain has now discovered the rights holder friendly nature of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which forces remixers to fight an uphill battle to prove that their work is a "fair use." However, instead of calling for an overhaul of the much hated law, McCain is calling for VIP treatment for the remixes made by political campaigns.... The only way we will get an effective overhaul of copyright laws will be by forcing politicians to suffer...

A security hole in Adobe Systems Inc software, used to distribute movies and TV shows over the Internet, is giving users free access to record and copy from Amazon.com Inc's video streaming service. The problem exposes online video content to the rampant piracy that plagued the music industry during the Napster era and is undermining efforts by retailers, movie studios and television networks to cash in on a huge Web audience. "It's a fundamental flaw in the Adobe design. This was designed stupidly," said Bruce Schneier, a security expert who is also the chief security technology officer at British Telecom....

Not very long ago, in a land not at all far away, there was a little company called Blueport. It held the copyright on a piece of software that the US Air Force liked using for logistics. Blueport protected its software with a time bomb—a bit of code that made the software self-destruct when the license expired. That date was approaching, and Blueport wanted to negotiate a new license with the USAF—and you know, get paid. Instead, it got a bit of the ol’ shock and awe. The Air Force not only didn’t pay up, it paid big contractor SAIC...

A judge's ruling today is a major victory for free speech and fair use on the Internet, and will help protect everyone who creates content for the Web. In Lenz v. Universal (aka the "dancing baby" case), Judge Jeremy Fogel held that content owners must consider fair use before sending takedown notices under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). Universal Music Corporation ("Universal") had sent a takedown notice targeting a 29-second home movie of a toddler dancing in a kitchen to a Prince song, "Let's Go Crazy," which is heard playing in the background. Because her use of the song...

From today, feel free to download another 25 million songs - legally   Adam Sherwin, Media Correspondent, in Cannes   After a decade fighting to stop illegal file-sharing, the music industry will give fans today what they have always wanted: an unlimited supply of free and legal songs. With CD sales in free fall and legal downloads yet to fill the gap, the music industry has reluctantly embraced the file-sharing technology that threatened to destroy it. Qtrax, a digital service announced today, promises a catalogue of more than 25 million songs that users can download to keep, free and...

If there was ever a good time to put away petty, hell, even major differences; that time would be now. If there was ever a time to decide that now is a good time to begin serious proliferation of the Linux Operating System, that time would be now as well.Gotten pretty numb to RIAA tactics? Have their serpentine practices become ho-hum to you?They must have heard about that...your ho-humminess that is.This is their way of shaking you out of ho-hum land.Yep...so you've come to either accept the risk of trading music or you have stopped out of fear of being...

In the year ahead, a long-heralded revolution in wireless communications will finally come to pass. It may throw handset makers and service providers into turmoil, but over time it should be great for consumers. Fast, wireless data will become more widely available, the choice of data devices and mobile handsets will expand, and service just might get cheaper. The biggest driver of change is an event slated for February, 2009. It is, of all things, the shutdown of analog television broadcasting. The conversion to digital TV will free up space now occupied by UHF channels 52 to 69. A chunk...

Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), also known as Congressman Hollywood, is one of the most powerful members of the House when it comes to intellectual property issues, so when he muses aloud about "revisiting" the DMCA, people listen. Unfortunately, Berman wants to reform the DMCA because it doesn't go far enough, and his ideas sound like they're ripped right from the pages of the Big Content playbook. Berman chairs the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, and this morning oversaw a hearing on the PRO-IP Act, a bill that could boost statutory damages for copyright infringement and create...

Ottawa copyright circles are buzzing with hints that the government is preparing its new revised copyright bill, and will be tabling it soon, perhaps as early as next week.And the buzz is that the new law will basically be a copy of the controversial U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Much in the as-yet-unseen bill will not be too surprising, considering that its primary intent is to ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization Performances and Phonograms treaties adopted in December, 1996, and signed by Canada a year later. That was also the basis of the DMCA.Further, informed sources are getting...

LOS ANGELES - A federal judge has granted a request by Ticketmaster LLC to block a software company from making or distributing computer programs used to flood the ticket retailer's Web site with orders, beating consumers who log onto the Web site manually to buy tickets. ADVERTISEMENT U.S. District Court Judge Audrey B. Collins issued a preliminary injunction against RMG Technologies Inc. on Monday, barring the Pittsburgh, Pa.-based firm from buying or facilitating the purchase of tickets from Ticketmaster's Web site for the purpose of reselling them. Collins concluded Ticketmaster would prove its claims that RMG infringed on its copyrights,...

Duluth, Minnesota — Testimony today in Capitol Records, et al v. Jammie Thomas quickly and inadvertently turned to the topic of fair use when Jennifer Pariser, the head of litigation for Sony BMG, was called to the stand to testify. Pariser said that file-sharing is extremely damaging to the music industry and that record labels are particularly affected. In doing so, she advocated a view of copyright that would turn many honest people into thieves. Pariser noted that music labels make no money on touring, radio, or merchandise, which leaves the company particularly exposed to the negative effects of file-sharing....

Any group that believes a worldwide flood created the Grand Canyon 4,000 years ago, that Cain married his sister, and that the King James translation of the Bible is inerrant must be used to a certain level of skeptical questioning, even downright hostility, but it doesn't mean that they enjoy it. Creation Science Evangelism, whose founder Kent Hovind ("Dr. Dino") was recently sentenced to ten years in prison for tax evasion, has been sending out DMCA takedown notices to YouTube in an attempt to halt the criticism. Now, critics claim that CSE has perjured itself by filing the claims.... A...

From reports that we are getting, starting yesterday a user account on YouTube, called cseministry, began fraudulently claiming that any video which criticized the felon, cheat, liar, fraud, huckster, etc. Kent Hovind violated the copyrights of the Creation Science Evangelism. Under the draconian DMCA, CSE can use such false claims to silence their critics, with little legal risk to themselves. Once a claim has been filed, YouTube is required by US Law to remove the content immediately and without any review. The real copyright holders then have to jump through hoops to get their content back on YouTube, that is...

A Seattle man is suing Autodesk for abusing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in an attempt to restrict the resale of its software. The plaintiff, Tim Vernor, alleges that Autodesk has repeatedly sent copyright infringement notices to eBay, where he has tried to sell legal copies of Autodesk software, because the company does not want the used copies to compete with new sales of the software. According to a copy of the complaint seen by Ars Technica, Autodesk began sending copyright infringement notices to eBay in May of 2005. He says that Autodesk never took the appropriate legal action to...

Back in April, a court found that Kaleidescape's high end DVD jukebox was perfectly legal, despite complaints from the entertainment industry. The DVD jukebox clearly was not for pirating materials. It would rip DVDs and store them on a hard drive, but it included all kinds of copy protection and cost $27,000. This wasn't for kids ripping DVDs in their bedrooms. When that lawsuit came out, the group in charge of the DVD spec, DVD-CCA whined that the lawsuit would delay the rollout of the latest DVD specs -- though it wasn't clear why. Now we know. PC Magazine has...

The Sony Betamax Supreme Court decision was one of the most important "fair use" decisions of the last 25 years, but it's been a constant source of frustration for Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyrights in the US since 1994. As head of the Copyright Office, Peters is in charge of the triennial DMCA anticircumvention review process. And every three years, her office sees the Sony case used as the basis for the most popular requested exemption: DVD ripping. Each time the Copyright Office deals with the issue, consumer groups contend that fair use rights to use the material on...

YouTube has restored a video critical of hip-hop star Akon posted by columnist Michelle Malkin after Universal Music Group issued a DMCA takedown notice to the video aggregation site. The saga began about a week and a half ago, when Malkin criticized Verizon for its sponsorship of Akon after a video of the performer dry-humping a 15-year-old girl at a concert in Trinidad surfaced. In her post, Malkin embedded an episode of her Hot Air show from YouTube. The episode was highly critical of Akon, and a few hours later, it had vanished. It was replaced by the now-all-too-familiar infringement...

What do Vista, Flash, RealPlayer, and iTunes have in common? According to Media Rights Technologies (MRT), all of them are infringing products under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and MRT has just sent cease-and-desist letters to Microsoft, Adobe, Real, and Apple. "Together these four companies are responsible for 98 percent of the media players in the marketplace; CNN, NPR, Clear Channel, MySpace, Yahoo, and YouTube all use these infringing devices to distribute copyrighted works," said MRT CEO Hank Risan in a statement. "We will hold the responsible parties accountable. The time of suing John Doe is over." Media Rights Technologies...

Remember last week’s kerfuffle over whether the movie industry could own random 128-bit numbers? (If not, here’s some background: 1, 2, 3) Now, thanks to our newly developed VirtualLandGrab technology, you can own a 128-bit integer of your very own. Here’s how we do it. First, we generate a fresh pseudorandom integer, just for you. Then we use your integer to encrypt a copyrighted haiku, thereby transforming your integer into a circumvention device capable of decrypting the haiku without your permission. We then give you all of our rights to decrypt the haiku using your integer. The DMCA does the...

A coalition of consumer groups and corporations that includes everyone from IP Justice to AT&T has just issued a statement calling on the US WIPO delegation to opppose WIPO's proposed Broadcast Treaty in its current form. In the letter, the groups worry that the treaty's support for worldwide legal rules regulating any device that can decrypt video signals "would presumably require wholesale regulation of general purpose computers and other devices, and have significant harmful consequences for the technology industry generally." We've taken a detailed look at the treaty before, but let's refresh our collective memories. The Broadcast Treaty has been...

Building a business on mob rule is dangerous. Digg.com, a website that lets anyone post and rank news stories and blogs, found that out when its members staged a revolt over what they saw as an effort to censor them. It began this week when Digg started banning members from posting a software code that helps online pirates make bootlegged copies of movies. Digg took action because the entertainment industry had threatened to sue. The ban set the masses off. Scores of Digg's 1.2 million registered users deluged the site, breaking traffic records and making sure that every one of...

Excerpt - The folks at Digg.com have let the social news genie out of the bottle, and now they can't control it. Since the HD-DVD encryption code was discovered and published, readers at Digg have been repeatedly submitting stories with the 16 digit hex code in the titles and bodies. Just as quickly as these posts crawl up the Digg charts, admins seem to be deleting them. Just search Google for 09 F9 and you'll find the key. Will AACS send a Cease and Desist to InfoWorld because I posted the text "09 F9"? If so, we might as well...

Thursday, April 12, 2007 DNC appoints RIAA shill to run Public Affairs for convention Today, Jenni Engebretsen was named "Deputy CEO for Public Affairs," for the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver -- but she is better known as the Director of Communications for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The RIAA is the most hated "company" in America, according to a recent poll on the Consumerist. The RIAA's campaign of suing thousands of American music lovers has been the single biggest PR disaster in recent industrial history -- which is why Engebretsen's employer beat out Halliburton, Blackwater and...

NEW YORK - MTV owner Viacom Inc. said Tuesday it has sued YouTube and its corporate parent Google Inc. in federal court for alleged copyright infringement and is seeking more than $1 billion in damages. Viacom claims that the more than 160,000 unauthorized video clips from its cable networks, which also include Comedy Central, VH1 and Nickelodeon, have been available on the popular video-sharing Web site. The lawsuit marks a sharp escalation of long-simmering tensions between Viacom and YouTube. Last month Viacom demanded that YouTube remove more than 100,000 unauthorized clips after several months of talks between the companies...

The music industry is intensifying its fight against unauthorized music downloading by college-age students, as new information shows a dramatic increase in the number of songs exchanged through file-sharing networks. The Recording Industry Assn. of America trade group today announced plans to file five times as many lawsuits against individuals this year as it did when it initially began suing people in September 2003. It sent 400 letters to universities offering deals for students the RIAA has determined are downloading unauthorized copies of songs. The deal allows students to settle before a lawsuit is filed and avoid a court record....

TracFone Wireless Inc., the nation’s largest pre-paid wireless company, said it is considering filing suit in federal court to repeal a new Library of Congress rule exempting mobile phone locking software from U.S. copyright law. The ruling essentially allows an individual to unlock his or her cell phone from the wireless service that it was sold with, thereby allowing the phone to work on other carriers’ networks. Previously, unlocking a phone violated U.S. copyright law. “Although TracFone believes that the exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act … was not intended to apply to prepaid wireless service, we are nevertheless...

Deal site BlackFriday.info yesterday removed the Best Buy "Black Friday" sales price list after the big box retailer threatened to deliver a DMCA takedown notice to Black Friday's ISP. In a brief posting, Black Friday said, "While we believe that sale prices are facts and not copyrightable, we do not want to risk having this website shut down due to a DMCA take down notice." In recent years, information on the post-Thanksgiving sales has become a highly prized commodity, with a number of sites featuring copies of major retailers' ads. Consumers looking for the best prices and wanting to streamline...

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 24 (Reuters) - A hacker who as a teen cracked the encryption on DVDs has found a way to unlock the code that prevents iPod users from playing songs from download music stores other than Apple Computer Inc.'s (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) iTunes, his company said on Tuesday. Jon Lech Johansen, a 22-year-old Norway native who lives in San Francisco, cracked Apple's FairPlay copy-protection technology, said Monique Farantzos, managing director at DoubleTwist, the company that plans to license the code to businesses. "What he did was basically reverse-engineer FairPlay," she said. "This allows other companies to offer...

The worst bill you’ve never heard of This will be a busy week in the House -- Congress goes into summer recess Friday, but not before considering the Section 115 Reform Act of 2006 (SIRA). Never heard of SIRA? That’s the way Big Copyright and their lackey’s want it, and it's bad news for you. Simply put, SIRA fundamentally redefines copyright and fair use in the digital world. It would require all incidental copies of music to be licensed separately from the originating copy. Even copies of songs that are cached in your computer's memory or buffered over a network...

A flood of legislation released by the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act threatens to drown whole classes of consumer electronics In 1998, U.S. entertainment companies persuaded Congress to make dramatic changes in its copyright code by passing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA gave copyright holders new rights to control the way people use copyrighted material and new protection for technologies designed to restrict access or copying. The movie and record companies argued they needed these new restrictions to fight increased piracy threats in the digital era. In the eight years since the DMCA's passage, however, piracy...

ThePirateBay is back from the dead again Reports of its demise greatly exaggerated By Nick Farrell: Sunday 04 June 2006, 23:09 THE P2P site ThePirateBay is back from the dead, despite claims from various anti-piracy groups that it had been sunk. The site went back online on Saturday at 6:07PM Eastern Standard Time, and already seems to be a bit busy, probably because it is not running at full capacity again. It is not clear if any of the smaller businesses that were also using the same ISP are back online. The last email we received from GameSwitch, that outfit...

MetroSource News 02:28:54 Satellite Recording Ban Capitol Hill Battle Brewing Over Satellite Radio Broadcasts (Washington, DC) -- Fearing a wave of illegal distribution of copyrighted music, lawmakers on Capitol Hill will consider legislation that would effectively ban all recording of satellite radio programming. The "Perform Act" circumvents the Audio Home Recording Act, which gives consumers the right to record material for private, non-commercial purposes, by requiring satellite broadcasters to either install equipment that prevents their programs from being recorded, or provide compensation to artists and performers to cover potential financial losses due to illegal distribution of their material. The Recording...

For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite. A proposed copyright law seen by CNET News.com would expand the DMCA's restrictions on software that can bypass copy protections and grant federal police more wiretapping and enforcement powers. ~ snip ~ The proposed law scheduled to be introduced by Rep. Smith also does the following: • Permits wiretaps in investigations of copyright crimes, trade secret theft and economic espionage. It would...

JOBS' MOB lawyers have swooped on to a message board run by the OSx86 project which is geared to those interested in using the Apple OS X onto x86 hardware.

Nettwerk Music Group, based in Vancouver, has joined forces with a Texas family after an American recording organization launched a lawsuit against the family for illegally downloading songs. Nettwerk, Canada's largest private record label, has offered to pay for the Greubel family’s legal fees and any fines they might incur because of a lawsuit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). “Suing music fans is not the solution, it’s the problem,” Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk, said in a statement. “Litigation is not ‘artist development.’ Litigation is a deterrent to creativity and passion and it is hurting the...

The Copyright Office is conducting a rulemaking proceeding mandated by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which provides that the Librarian of Congress may exempt certain classes of works from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. The purpose of this rulemaking proceeding is to determine whether there are particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely to be, adversely affected in their ability to make noninfringing uses due to the prohibition on circumvention of measures that protect access. The scope of this rulemaking does not include technological measures that prevent...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will publish history’s first “storyline patent” application today from an application filed in November, 2003. Inventor Andrew Knight will assert publication-based provisional patent rights against the entertainment industry. Falls Church, Virginia (PRWEB) November 3, 2005 -- Further to a policy of publishing patent applications eighteen months after filing, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is scheduled to publish history’s first “storyline patent” application today. The publication will be based on a utility patent application filed by Andrew Knight in November, 2003, the first such application to claim a fictional storyline. Knight, a rocket engine...

Sony is in trouble but we might be the ones who lose out in the end, says technology commentator Bill Thompson. Sony says it has been using XCP for months Sony BMG, the record company part of the multinational corporation that makes laptops, TVs, movies and many other things, is in trouble this week thanks to a copy protection scheme it has used on a number of its CDs. The software, called Extended Copy Protection or XCP, hides itself on your hard drive using techniques normally reserved for viruses, worms and trojans, which use similar "rootkits" to evade detection. And...

Hollywood and large U.S. software companies chalked up another crucial yet little-noticed victory last week with the final approval of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. You wouldn't know it from a political debate veering between labor standards in Nicaragua and the evils of protectionism, but one major section of CAFTA will export some of the more controversial sections of U.S. copyright law. Once it takes effect, CAFTA will require Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua to mirror the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's broad prohibition on bypassing copy-protection technology.

Evelyn won't return my phone calls. So that means she's ignoring me. Or she wants to talk to me, but can't, because the Recording Industry Association of America won't let her. In December, Evelyn found out she had been targeted by the RIAA in its ever increasing crusade against children, mothers and senior citizens who don't uncheck the "share" option in their peer-to-peer downloading software. The Daily Texan office received Evelyn's call on the last press day before winter break. She had received a notice from Time Warner stating that they were subpoenaed into releasing her personal information in a...

From Byron York at National Review: “I plead guilty to violating the copyright laws of the United States by watching a bootleg DVD,” Rove answered with a grin. “I refuse to enrich [Moore],” he added, giving the clear impression that he had a rather low opinion of the filmmaker.Awesome.

Appeals Court Declines Rehearing in Toner Cartridge Lawsuit The Associated Press Published: Feb 21, 2005 LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) - A federal appeals court has refused to reconsider its ruling that allowed a North Carolina company to make and sell computer chips that enable recycled toner cartridges to work in Lexmark International printers. The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati allows Static Control Components of Sanford, N.C., to keep competing for the remanufactured cartridge business. Lexington-based Lexmark filed suit in 2002 accusing Static Control of violating copyright law along with the Digital...

LONDON, England -- Video recorders have taken a step closer to extinction after Britain's largest electrical supplier said it would stop selling VCRs to concentrate on their successor, the DVD. [snip] Dixons said it now expected to sell its remaining stock of VCRs by Christmas, although other electrical retailers said they would continue to sell them for the foreseeable future.

In a closely watched case involving the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a federal court has ruled that a small North Carolina company can continue selling a chip that makes it possible to use refilled toner cartridges in Lexmark printers. ...

This just in: A district court in Boston has used the DMCA to grant a preliminary injunction against a third party service vendor who tried to fix StorageTek tape library backup systems for legitimate purchasers of the system. How is this a DMCA violation? Well, it turns out that StorageTek allegedly uses some kind of algorithmic "key" to control access to its "Maintenance Code", the module that allows the service tech to debug the storage system. The court found that third party service techs who used the key without StorageTek's permission "circumvented" to gain access to the copyrighted code in...

Congress has taken a step toward revising the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which has attracted extensive criticism over the past six years. A House of Representatives subcommittee convened Wednesday for the first hearing devoted to a proposal to defang the DMCA, a 1998 law that broadly restricts bypassing copy-protection technologies used in DVDs, a few music CDs and some software programs. Called the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, the amendments are backed by librarians, liberal consumer groups and some technology firms. But they're bitterly opposed by the entertainment industry, including Hollywood, major record labels and the Business Software Alliance. "It...

DVD copying software ruled illegal 11:10 24 February 04 NewScientist.com news service Selling software bypassing copyright protection mechanisms on DVDs is illegal - even if the purpose is to make back-up copies for personal use, a California court has ruled. The ruling clarifies ambiguities in the controversial Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), but is a blow to consumers who rely on back-up copies of DVDs to safeguard against damage to the original. Ruling in favour of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) on Friday, Judge Susan Illston said that within the next seven days, the software company 321 Studios...