TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Lawmakers Get Caught Parroting Copyright Lobby
- ‘X-Art’ Movie Pirate Ordered to Pay $40,500 Damages
- Dotcom: Popcorn Time Shows Where Road Ends for Hollywood
| Lawmakers Get Caught Parroting Copyright Lobby Posted: 18 Mar 2014 04:31 AM PDT
This also happened to a crowdsourced draft for a “fairer” copyright law which reached the required threshold last summer. Termed "The Common Sense in Copyright Act," the proposal aims to reduce penalties for copyright infringement, increase fair use, ban unfair clauses in recording contracts, and ease the ability for people to make copies of items they already own for backup and time-shifting purposes. Last month the proposal was first presented in the Finnish Parliament. This piqued the interest of copyright lobby groups, who handed over a memo to Members of Parliament before the hearing, to inform them on their stance. Needless to say, the entertainment and media companies were rather critical of the public proposal. What was more surprising though, is that many MPs repeated the rhetoric that was put forward in the pamphlet. Member of Parliament Kauko Tuuppainen went as far as parroting from the memo word-for-word, which was noticed by fellow MP Oras Tynkkynen, and later picked up by the Finnish press. Below is a translation of Tuuppainen’s address in Parliament: “The proposal could make Finland into a safe harbor for international piracy. Why? Because it encourages copyright infringement in many ways. One would be free to copy illegal content from the internet according to the proposal.” – MP Kauko Tuupainen in the initial hearing in Parliament. Now compare this to the language used by the copyright groups in their memo: “The proposal would make Finland into a safe harbor for international piracy. The proposal encourages copyright infringement in many ways. One would be free to copy illegal content from the internet according to the proposal.” – Joint announcement by the content and media industry organizations. The two descriptions of the law are nearly identical, with several phrases being read word-for-word directly from the memo. Open Ministry, the organization that coordinates the public law proposals, is not happy with the display of lobbyists’ influence. The whole idea of the public proposals is to hear the voice of the public and experts, but some MPs would rather parrot lobbyists’ opinions. “Since copyright issues can be complex, we asked MPs to first hear what the experts have to say on the suggested changes, before shooting them down based on industry lobbyists objections and exaggerated propaganda. They did not,” Open Ministry Chairman Joonas Pekkanen says. "The suggested changes are not that radical, since there is national room to maneuver within the boundaries set by the EU Copyright legislation," he adds. The above shows that the copyright lobby has a strong influence on lawmaking, and that in some cases the voice of the public can be easily countered by a handful of lobbyists. While it doesn’t leak out in public very often, it’s not a big secret that industry groups have a strong say in the laws that are enacted worldwide. Just a few months ago it was revealed that 150 amendments to the EU data protection bill, submitted by Belgian Member of European Parliament Louis Michel, were copy-pasted from lobbyist paperwork. For the Finnish “fairer” copyright law there is still hope though. The proposal has now been referred to the Culture Committee, who will advise on whether to accept it later this year. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.    |
| ‘X-Art’ Movie Pirate Ordered to Pay $40,500 Damages Posted: 17 Mar 2014 12:25 PM PDT
Day in and day out the company scours the Internet for people sharing their movies via BitTorrent. They then collect the associated IP-addresses, and ask courts all over the country to help them find the perpetrators. Nearly all of these cases end up being settled for a few thousand dollars each. However, every now and then a defendant fails to respond, giving Malibu Media the opportunity to obtain a default judgment. This happened to L. Sagala from Muskegon, Michigan, who was found guilty of willful copyright infringement by a federal court last week. Malibu Media found that the IP-address registered to Sagala was used to share several X-Art movies and asked the court to award $40,500.00 in statutory damages. A bargain, according to Malibu Media, who claim that the real damages are even higher. “Despite the fact of Defendant's willful infringement, Plaintiff only seeks an award of $40,500.00 in statutory damages. This amount is reasonable when considering that Plaintiff's actual damages far exceed this sum,” Malibu Media’s lawyers write. “To explain, Defendant materially aided each of the other participants in the BitTorrent swarm of infringers. This swarm contained thousands of peers and continues to grow. Plaintiff's actual damages are the lost sales of its content to those thousands of infringers. In the aggregate, these lost sales far exceed $40,500.00,” they add. In an order filed before the weekend, District Court Judge Robert Jonkert grants Malibu Media’s damages request, as well as $1,649.40 for attorneys' fees and costs. As Sagala failed to defend himself the verdict doesn’t come as a surprise. However, the relatively high damages award is not something we see every day.  Over the past few months Malibu Media has scored several similar default “victories” and there is no sign that they will be stopping anytime soon. Together with numerous settlements, which are worth up to thousands of dollars each, the company and its lawyers are estimated to have made millions of dollars. Malibu Media’s legal action against alleged BitTorrent pirates initially started in 2012, when it followed in the footsteps of several other adult entertainment outfits. Since then, the company has filed a total of 1,894 lawsuits. It’s pretty safe to say that in addition to its x-rated activities, Malibu Media has also perfected the ‘art’ of copyright trolling. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.   |
| Dotcom: Popcorn Time Shows Where Road Ends for Hollywood Posted: 17 Mar 2014 04:59 AM PDT
Pressure had been building within the project and rather than let things get completely out of hand, a decision was taken to move away. At the start of the weekend the Popcorn Time team called it quits and interest in the project expressed by a dev at YTS was later withdrawn by the site’s operator. Earlier in the week there had been other complications too, including the removal of the Popcorn Time installer from Mega.co.nz, the hosting service chosen by the software’s devs. So what did Kim Dotcom know about that? “I just woke up. No idea what happened,” Dotcom told TF at 03:50am local time Thursday. “I’m not involved in Mega’s day-to-day business since I resigned from Management to work on an alternative Internet concept called Meganet, Baboom and the Internet Party.” Days later we’re still no closer to discovering why the files were taken down, whether that was due to Mega’s own decision based on a ToS violation or if the hosting service was pressured by the MPAA. What is clear, however, is that Popcorn Time, the most elegant unofficial movie-viewing application of recent times, has underlined that the destruction of Mega did little to ease Hollywood’s plight.
“Popcorn Time and countless similar applications show where the road ends for Hollywood. Ultimately it’s a cat-and-mouse game Hollywood can’t win by force but only with smarter Internet offerings.” Interestingly, it seems that the people behind Popcorn Time actually understand where Dotcom is coming from. In a file-sharing world dominated by the likes of The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, Popcorn Time came along this week and took what XBMC has being doing for some time and amped it up to eleven. They took the same content being offered by everyone else and made it more accessible and desirable. Dotcom says this is what Hollywood should be doing, but instead their anti-piracy fixation remains. “The destruction of Megaupload did nothing for Hollywood. Piracy is bigger than ever, despite overreaching law enforcement action & efforts by the MPAA and Chris Dodd to buy aggressive copyright laws and treaties. Hollywood made a mistake when they hired a powerful former Senator to run the MPAA in an attempt to fix their Internet problems with a sledgehammer,” he adds. While Popcorn Time was hardly stealth with its public torrent sources and open source format, Dotcom says that the worst is yet to come. “The innovators of today are working on fully encrypted parallel Internets which don’t rely on IPs. They are fluid oceans of homeless data that can’t be controlled by anybody. I know of several projects that will make it extremely difficult for Hollywood. How do you take things down that can’t be taken down?” he questions. “Combine that with apps and sites that provide a no-takedown one-click high-speed content experience and Hollywood’s nightmare is complete.” The signs indeed point to things getting worse. This week TF spoke to a developer who told us that work is already underway to bring a Popcorn Time-style experience to smart TVs, showing that not only is innovation far from dead, but soon even the likes of The Pirate Bay will have to do something to catch up. According to Dotcom, however, there’s still time for Hollywood to properly open up. “It’s not to late for Hollywood to embrace the Internet and offer more appealing services than those unauthorized services out there. Within three years Hollywood could double global income with an ingenious new online content service I have created. It’s so good that International license holders of content would join this offering in a heartbeat. I have offered my help in an open letter to Hollywood some time ago. They still prefer the sledgehammer,” he says. “Hollywood has built a fortune on stories with happy endings, yet they don’t get it in the real world. The Internet has the potential to be the biggest happy ending for Hollywood – and I know how,” Dotcom concludes. Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and VPN services.   |
The Finnish constitution allows citizens to draft and submit legislative proposals for Parliament to vote on. All proposals that get 50,000 supporters within six months will be referred. 
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