Torrentfreak: “In The Fappening’s Wake, 4chan Intros DMCA Policy” plus 1 more

In The Fappening’s Wake, 4chan Intros DMCA Policy

Posted: 03 Sep 2014 03:21 AM PDT

Every now and again a phenomenon takes the Internet by storm. They’re situations that the term ‘going viral’ was made for. A couple of weeks ago it was ice buckets, and since the weekend its been leaked celebrity pictures.

The event, which needs little introduction, saw the iCloud accounts of many prominent female celebrities accessed illegally and their personal (in many cases intimately so) photographs leaked online. The FBI are investigating and for the leakers this probably isn’t going to end well.

But for the users of 4chan this leak, which was rumored to have begun on the board itself, was the gift that just kept on giving. Excited users quickly came up with a portmanteau based on ‘happening’ plus ‘fapping’ and The Fappening was born, a prelude to taking the Internet by storm.

While the event itself appears to be dying down, the leak and the worldwide attention it bestowed on 4chan may have prompted a surprise decision by the site’s operator. Whether the leak was directly responsible will become clear in due course (we’ve reached out to the site for a response), but sometime yesterday 4chan introduced a DMCA policy.

The policy registers a DMCA agent for 4chan, which helps to afford the site safe harbor protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Although not yet listed in the numerical section of Copyright.gov, the designated agent will now become the point of contact for copyright complaints and DMCA notices when content owners believe that their ownership rights have been violated on 4chan.

While most US-based user-generated content websites should not entertain operating without safe harbor, the way 4chan is set up provides a unique scenario in respect of infringing content being posted by its users.

“Threads expire and are pruned by 4chan’s software at a relatively high rate. Since most boards are limited to eleven or sixteen pages, content is usually available for only a few hours or days before it is removed,” the site’s FAQ explains.

4chan’s Chris Poole (‘moot’) previously told the Washington Post his deletion policy was both a necessarily evil and a plus to the site.

"It's one of the few sites that has no memory. It's forgotten the next day," he said.

Despite the board’s userbase being notoriously rebellious, the deletion policy appears to work well. To date Google’s Transparency Report lists takedowns for just 706 URLs.

"I don't have resources like YouTube to deal with $1 billion lawsuit with Viacom,” Poole said in 2012. “Don't store what you absolutely don't need. People are pre-disposed to wanting to store everything."

Of course, it’s not only companies such as Viacom on the warpath. Yesterday a spokesman for Jennifer Lawrence said that the authorities had been contacted and anyone found posting ‘stolen’ photos of the actress online would be prosecuted.

While the scope of that action isn’t entirely clear, many of the leaked photos were ‘selfies’ to which Lawrence has first shout on copyright. They’re still being posted on hundreds if not thousands of Internet sites even today, so having a DMCA policy in place will help those sites avoid liability, even if in 4chan’s case the images are only present for a few hours.

In the meantime, sites such as The Pirate Bay who care substantially less about copyright law than 4chan does today are continuing to spread the full currently-available ‘Fappening’ archives at a rapid rate. Statistics collected by TorrentFreak suggest that the packs have been downloaded well over a million times.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

UK Govt. Warns Google, Microsoft & Yahoo Over Piracy

Posted: 02 Sep 2014 10:19 AM PDT

Developments over the past 12 months have sent the clearest message yet that the UK government is not only prepared to morally support the creative industries, but also spend public money on anti-piracy enforcement.

The government-funded City of London Intellectual Property Crime Unit is definitely showing no signs of losing interest, carrying out yet another arrest yesterday morning on behalf of video rightsholders. In the afternoon during the BPI’s Annual General Meeting in London, the unit was being praised by both government officials and a music sector also keen to bring piracy under control.

“We've given £2.5 million to support the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, PIPCU,” Culture Secretary Sajid Javid told those in attendance.

“The first unit of its kind in the world, PIPCU is working with industry groups – including the BPI – on the Infringing Websites List. The list identifies sites that deliberately and consistently breach copyright, so brand owners can avoid advertising on them.”

Referencing rampant online piracy, Javid said that no industry or government could stand by and let “massive, industrial scale” levels of infringement continue.

“I know some people say the IP genie is out of the bottle and that no amount of wishing will force it back in. But I don't agree with them,” he said.

“We don't look at any other crimes and say ‘It's such a big problem that it's not worth bothering with.’ We wouldn't stand idly by if paintings worth hundreds of millions of pounds were being stolen from the National Gallery.Copyright infringement is theft, pure and simple. And it's vital we try to reduce it.”

Going on to detail the Creative Content initiative which the government is supporting to the tune of £3.5m, Javid said the system would deliver a “robust, fair and effective enforcement regime”.

But that, however, is only one part of the puzzle. Infringing sites need to be dealt with, directly and by other means, he added.

“Copyright crooks don't love music. They love money, and they've been attracted to the industry solely by its potential to make them rich. Take away their profits and you take away their reason for being. Of course, it's not just up to the government and music industry to deal with this issue,” he noted.

Putting search engines on notice, the MP said that they have an important role to play.

“They must step up and show willing. That's why [Business Secretary] Vince Cable and I have written to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, asking them to work with [the music industry] to stop search results sending people to illegal sites,” Javid said.

“And let me be perfectly clear: if we don't see real progress, we will be looking at a legislative approach. In the words of [Beggars Group chairman] Martin Mills, ‘technology companies should be the partners of rights companies, not their masters’.”

The Culture Secretary said that when it comes to tackling piracy, the government, music industry and tech companies are “three sides of the same triangle.” But despite that expectation of togetherness, only time will tell if the search engines agree to the point of taking voluntary action to support it.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.