TorrentFreak Email Update |
- YouTube Ordered to Remove “Illegal” Copyright Blocking Notices
- Six Strikes Anti-Piracy Scheme Turns One Year, But Does It Work?
- Paramount Sets Lawyers on ‘Top Gun’ Frame-By-Frame Tweets
| YouTube Ordered to Remove “Illegal” Copyright Blocking Notices Posted: 26 Feb 2014 01:46 AM PST
It is a complex battle with a simple disagreement at its core. In 2007 the entities reached a licensing agreement for YouTube to use works from GEMA’s extensive repertoire. Two years later negotiations to extend that deal broke down when GEMA’s long-term demand of around €0.12 per stream was rejected by Google. In May 2010 GEMA sued to have YouTube block certain titles so that they could not be viewed locally. In April 2012 and after much legal wrangling, the Regional Court of Hamburg ruled that YouTube could be held liable for the “infringing” videos and must therefore take measures to render content unavailable in Germany. And herein lies the problem. YouTube is a constant source of frustration for German users thanks to the blocking of thousands of videos as a result of the GEMA dispute. When local users try to access popular videos being enjoyed by their fellow Internet users (GEMA claims that YouTube overblocks unnecessarily) they are greeted with a message informing them that they should blame GEMA, not YouTube, for the inconvenience.
Time and again, users are informed that videos are blocked due to GEMA not granting the necessary music rights. As a result, GEMA has become very unpopular indeed. Trying to remedy the situation, GEMA applied for an injunction to force YouTube to change the messages, claiming that they misrepresent the situation and damage GEMA’s reputation. YouTube alone is responsible for blocking the videos, claiming otherwise is simply false, GEMA argued. Yesterday the District Court of Munich agreed with the music group and issued an injunction to force YouTube to comply, stating that the notices “denigrate” GEMA with a “totally distorted representation of the legal dispute between the parties.” Changing the message to state that videos are not available due to a lack of a licensing agreement between YouTube and GEMA would be more appropriate, the Court said. “For almost three years, YouTube has misled the public with these blocking messages and unlawfully influenced public opinion at the expense of GEMA,” GEMA CEO Dr. Harald Heker said in a statement. “The decision sends an important and positive signal: It’s not GEMA preventing the enjoyment of music on the Internet. It seeks merely to license YouTube, like all other music portals. Our concern is that the artists participate in the economic exploitation of their works and can earn a livelihood in the future.” YouTube parent company Google said it was studying the decision. “We need to examine the reasons for the judgment, before we can make a decision about what to do next,” a spokesperson said. Once the judgment of the District Court of Munich is made final, YouTube faces fines of up to 250,000 euros per breach. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services. |
| Six Strikes Anti-Piracy Scheme Turns One Year, But Does It Work? Posted: 25 Feb 2014 01:42 PM PST
The Copyright Alert System's main goal is to educate the public. People are informed that their connections are being used to share copyrighted material without permission, and told where they can find legal alternatives. These alerts start out friendly in tone, but repeat infringers face a temporary disconnection from the Internet or other mitigation measures. The program has not yet revealed how many people have been warned thus far or how many have been punished. Data obtained by TF earlier this month showed that Comcast had sent out 625,000 alerts to its subscribers. Today it’s a year since the Copyright Alert System officially rolled out, so it’s time to look back at what happened over recent months. What stands out most is the lack of news. The Center for Copyright Information (CCI), which oversees the program, has issued no press releases over the past 12 months, and nor have any of the participating parties. The only time CCI hit the mainstream news is when it lost its company status temporarily, and when it was criticized for its efforts to teach copyright classes at kindergartens. None of these issues were directly related to the Copyright Alert program. The big question that has to be answered somewhere in the future is how effective the six-strikes scheme is. The ultimate goal of the program is to reduce online piracy, but thus far there has been no clear indication that this is happening. On the contrary, recent research shows that these type of anti-piracy efforts are rather unsuccessful. This is confirmed by data provided by The Pirate Bay, whose growth in U.S. traffic continued after the system went into effect. Similarly, there have been no reports indicating an increase in movie or music industry revenues that can be linked to the introduction of the Copyright Alert System. The only industry that clearly profited from the new anti-piracy measures are the providers of anonymity services. This suggests that many people prefer to hide what they are sharing, instead of kicking their piracy habit. The above suggests that the Copyright Alert System may not be as effective as the copyright holders had hoped. In a few weeks CCI is expected to release more details on the program’s results, so we might know more then. Aside from analyzing the effectiveness of the program, CCI is also looking to include other copyright holders and ISPs. No official announcements have yet been made on this front. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services. |
| Paramount Sets Lawyers on ‘Top Gun’ Frame-By-Frame Tweets Posted: 25 Feb 2014 08:09 AM PST
With the Navy’s elite fighter weapons school as a backdrop, the perfect smile of Tom Cruise to charm the beautiful Kelly McGillis, and the bleached flattop of Val Kilmer to wow the masses, the flick ticked all the 80s boxes. Throw in Kenny Loggins’ ‘Danger Zone’ and to those born in the 70s it didn’t get much better than this. Nearly three decades on and to ensure that a whole new generation is exposed to Tony Scott’s masterpiece, for the last month Twitter account @555uhz has been tweeting Top Gun to the world, but with a twist. The movie, which runs to 110 mins in regular format, is being relayed frame-by-frame in the JPG format, a feat that could take months to complete.
At the time of writing the account has pushed out 1,525 tweets to the delight of nearly 6,900 followers. But as they ponder where best to invest in a pair of much-needed Aviator shades, the whole 80s nostalgia trip could already be on the verge of extinction. Even though modern movies fly at dozens of frames per second and this reenactment is struggling to get off the ground with a couple every hour, it seems that the lawyers in Hollywood have decided this Twitter account is an existential threat to their near 30-year-old Top Gun revenue machine.
Sometime in the past few days, exactly when is unclear, Paramount Pictures sent a lone MiG 28 on a dangerous mission to end the rampant copyright infringement being carried out by @555uhz. The plane, flown by a pilot from the Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP lawfirm, dropped a single but potentially devastating DMCA notice on Twitter in San Francisco. It contained a chilling message. “We are writing to you on behalf of our client, Paramount Pictures Corporation (‘Paramount’). Paramount is the owner of copyright and other intellectual property rights in and to the ‘Top Gun’ motion picture (hereinafter referred to as ‘Top Gun’). No one is authorized to copy, reproduce, distribute, or otherwise use Top Gun without the express written permission of Paramount,” the notice warned. “Notwithstanding this, it has come to our attention that a user of your website, @555uhz, is distributing the Top Gun film, frame by frame, via your website. The following URLs are some examples from the user's Twitter account, with additional frames being uploaded continuously.” What followed was a list of URLs, each representing a slow but steady destruction of Paramount’s near thirty-year-old Top Gun business model. “Paramount has the good faith belief that the use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by Paramount, its agent or the law. We request that you immediately remove all the Top Gun images from this website relating to the @555uhz user account,” the law firm concludes in tones that can only be described as Cold War-esque. However, it appears that Twitter hasn’t been fazed by Paramount. The notice, which just appeared on Chilling Effects, has clearly been already processed by Twitter yet none of the tweets listed in the notice have been removed. Claim dismissed.
More tweets are going up every few minutes too, meaning that thus far Twitter hasn’t bowed to Paramount’s request to remove all images from the account either. This could mean that there will be dozens of new complaints and an entire squadron of MiGs heading for Twitter in the future. Maverick, your country needs you. Again. Update: Twitter nuked the account…. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services. |
February last year the MPAA, RIAA and five major Internet providers in the United States launched their 
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